£ibranp  of  Che  'theological  ^eromarp 

PRINCETON  •  NEW  JERSEY 


PRESENTED  BY 

John  Stuart  Conning,  D.P. 

DS  149  . K3  1921 

Kallen,  Horace  Meyer,  1882- 

Zionism  and  world  politics 


# 


ZIONISM 

AND 

WORLD  POLITICS 


Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 
in  2018  with  funding  from 
Princeton  Theological  Seminary  Library 


https://archive.org/details/zionismworldpoli00kall_0 


COPYRIGHT,  1921,  BY 
DOUBLEDAY,  PAGE  &  COMPANY 

ALL  RIGHTS  RESERVED,  INCLUDING  THAT  OF  TRANSLATION 
INTO  FOREIGN  LANGUAGES,  INCLUDING  THE  SCANDINAVIAN 


JACOB  AND  RUTH  BILLIKOPF 


PREFACE 

THERE  are  two  types  of  prejudices  about  the  Jews 
— those  entertained  by  Jews,  and  those  entertained 
by  non -Jews.  The  former  are  rooted  in  an  invincible 
vanity,  expressed  in  the  conception  of  the  “Chosen 
People,”  reenforced  by  tradition,  and  confirmed  and 
automatically  justified  as  a  psychological  mechanism 
of  self-defence  by  the  tragic  status  of  the  Jew  in  the 
religious  doctrine  and  social  practices  of  the  Christian 
world.  The  latter  arises  primarily  out  of  the  implica¬ 
tions  of  the  Christian  religious  system,  which  gives  the 
Jew  a  cosmic  centrality  unparalleled  by  the  status  of 
other  peoples,  even  while  it  outlaws  him  from  the  fellow¬ 
ship  of  mankind.  Both  sets  of  prejudices  are  the 
creations  of  the  passions  of  hope  and  fear.  Both 
can  be  much  mitigated,  if  not  entirely  dissipated,  by 
knowledge.  Both  have  indeed  undergone  noticeable 
modification  through  the  expansion  of  science  and  the 
growth  of  the  objective  studies  of  social  groups  and 
social  events.  Prejudices,  however,  being  the  symbols 
of  feeling  and  not  of  understanding,  die  hard.  Their 
lives  are  the  longer  in  the  degree  in  which  they  are 
implicated  in  those  massive  sentiments  of  society  whose 
vital  spark  is  emotion  involving  the  fear  of  death 
and  the  hope  of  salvation,  and  whose  body  is  an  ancient 
tradition  and  a  tissue  of  customs  concerned,  in  however 


Vll 


PREFACE 


•  •  • 

Vlll 

fanciful  a  manner,  with  the  alleviation  and  gratifica¬ 
tion  of  these  feelings.  Any  sudden  interruption  of 
the  normal  current  of  sentiment  and  behaviour,  any 
break  or  shift  in  the  continuity  of  social  action,  any 
cataclysm  or  catastrophe,  throws  these  emotions  into 
intense  activity  and  revivifies  the  whole  dead  mass 
of  past  fancies,  ideas,  imaginings,  doctrines,  and  prac¬ 
tices,  no  matter  how  silly  and  absurd  they  may  be. 
The  Great  War  has  done  this  with  respect  to  wide 
areas  of  the  historic  field  of  religion  and  superstition. 
It  has  done  this  also  with  respect  to  the  Jews.  The 
misery  and  unhappiness  of  the  race  in  central  Europe 
can  be  measured  by  the  intensity  of  their  compensatory 
hope  toward  Zion,  and  the  misery  and  unhappiness 
of  their  Gentile  neighbours  can  be  measured  by  the 
sensibility  with  which  they  respond  to  revivals,  in 
somewhat  modernized  guise,  of  mediaeval  opinions 
about  Jews  by  militarist,  royalist  conspirators  from 
Germany,  Russia,  Hungary,  Poland,  acting  with 
malice  prepense.  The  mood  of  central  Europe  is  a 
poison  which  has  infected,  not  without  purposive 
assistance  from  these  same  conspirators,  England, 
France,  the  United  States.  There  has  rarely  been  a 
time  when  the  truth  about  the  Jews  was  so  needful 
as  an  antidote  to  prejudice  regarding  the  Jews  among 
both  Jews  and  Gentiles. 

It  is  the  truth  about  the  Jews  which  I  have  sought, 
as  a  psychological  and  philosophic  student  of  history, 
to  set  down,  so  far  as  in  my  power  lay,  in  this  book. 
The  studies  of  which  it  consists  were  begun  in  1915, 
long  before  there  was  any  suspicion  of  the  terrible 
shattering  of  the  structure  of  European  society  which 
is  the  outcome  of  the  war  to  make  the  world  safe  for 


PREFACE 


IX 


democracy.  The  continuation  of  them  was  modified 
by  American  participation  in  the  war,  which  gave 
them,  willy-nilly,  a  somewhat  different  direction  than 
was  originally  intended.  Some  of  the  events  here  re¬ 
corded  and  analyzed  I  have  participated  in  directly; 
others,  I  have  been  a  close  witness  of.  Many  I  have 
studied,  prior  to  the  Peace  Conference,  as  a  member 
of  the  Government  inquiry  into  the  terms  of  peace 
headed  by  Colonel  House,  in  the  light  of  the  probable 
needs  of  the  American  delegation  there  for  correct 
information.  Portions  of  the  studies,  being  pertinent 
to  special  occasions,  have  been  previously  printed. 
These  are  the  sections  of  the  early  chapters  which  deal 
with  the  evolution  of  European  nationalism  and  its 
influence  on  the  Jewish  position,  a  section  of  the  chap¬ 
ter  on  American  Jewry,  and  an  abridgment  of  the 
last  chapter.  They  appeared,  respectively,  in  the 
International  Journal  of  Ethics ,  the  American  Jewish 
Chronicle ,  and  the  Menorah  Journal . 

To  Leo  Wolman  and  Wesley  Clair  Mitchell,  my 
colleagues  at  the  New  School  for  Social  Research,  I  am 
indebted  for  much  valuable  criticism  and  suggestion; 
to  Miss  Lurene  MacDonald,  the  Librarian  at  the 
School,  for  assistance  in  the  classification  of  the 
material  and  preparing  the  index;  to  my  ever-helpful 
sister,  Ida  Kallen,  and  to  my  old  friend  and  pupil,  Mar¬ 
vin  Lowenthal,  for  aid  in  reading  the  manuscript  and 
getting  it  ready  for  the  press;  to  my  dear  fellow-worker, 
Julian  W.  Mack,  for  help  with  the  proof  and  many 
valuable  suggestions  and  corrections.  These  acknowl¬ 
edgments  can  only  scantily  express  what  I  owe  them. 

H.  M.  Kallen. 


The  New  School  for  Social  Research. 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 

Preface . vii 

CHAPTER 

I.  Pioneer,  O  Pioneer .  1 

II.  The  Origin  and  Basis  of  Zionism  .  .  5 

III.  Religious  Imperialism  and  the  Jewish 

Position . 18 

IV.  Effects  of  the  Philosophy  of  Natural 

Rights  upon  the  Jewish  Position  .  32 

V.  The  Nationalist  Transvaluation  of 

Natural  Rights  and  the  Return  of 
Secular  Jewish  Nationalism.  .  .  44 

VI.  Secular  Nationalism  among  the  Jews 

of  Eastern  Europe . 64 

VII.  Ahad  Ha’am,  Herzl,  and  the  Develop¬ 
ment  of  Organized  Zionism ...  73 

VIII.  Parties  and  Programmes  after  Herzl’s 

Death . 84 

IX.  The  Pre-Zionist  Jewry  of  Palestine.  .  92 

X.  Zionism  in  Palestine  and  the  Near- 

Eastern  Question . 104 

XI.  Enter  American  Jewry . 120 


xi 


Xll 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER  PAGE 

XII.  Zionist  Endeavour  and  the  Politics  of 

the  Great  War . 150 

XIII.  The  Jewish  Cause  at  the  Peace  Con¬ 


ference  . 177 

XIV.  From  Versailles  to  San  Remo — The 

Basic  Conflict . 197 


XV.  From  Versailles  to  San  Remo — The 

Conflict  in  Russia  and  America  .  208 

XVI.  From  Versailles  to  San  Remo — The 
Conflict  in  Poland,  the  Ukraine, 
Hungary,  and  Rumania.  .  .  .  217 

XVII.  From  Versailles  to  San  Remo — Palestine 


and  the  Near-Eastern  Problem  .  244 

XVIII.  San  Remo — The  End  of  an  Epoch  .  .  263 

XIX.  “Vita  Nuova?” . 274 


ZIONISM 

AND 

WORLD  POLITICS 


Zionism  and  World  Politics 


CHAPTER  i 

PIONEER,  O  PIONEER 

FIFTY  miles  southward  from  Lemberg,  in  the 
direction  of  Odessa,  there  is  a  hostel  owned  and  man¬ 
aged  by  a  Polish  Jew.  His  inn  is  a  house  by  the 
side  of  the  road,  and  since  1914  all  manner  of  men  have 
taken  shelter  in  it.  It  has  survived  a  hundred  battles 
and  five  campaigns,  shabbier  and  more  rickety  after 
each  one,  but  still  offering  a  roof  over  the  head,  and, 
on  rare  occasions  when  its  owner  can  make  a  dicker 
with  the  peasants,  a  bite  to  eat.  Most  of  its  guests 
bring  their  own  food,  according  to  their  rank  and 
station,  generals  from  Austrian  and  Russian  armies, 
Polish  and  Ukrainian  raiders,  once  even  Soviet  cavalry, 
French  and  British  military  emissaries,  American 
Red  Cross  men  and  Y.  M.  C.  A.  workers.  On  occa¬ 
sion  women  and  children  of  the  country  have  taken 
refuge  in  its  cellars,  until  the  military  pest  should  pass. 
Its  bar  has  seen  unspeakable  cruelties  committed  upon 
non-combatants.  To-day  its  guests  are  mostly  young 
Jews  and  Jewesses,  on  their  way  to  Palestine. 

The  road  beside  which  the  inn  stands  is  one  of  the 
barbarous  ungraded  roads  of  Slavic  Europe.  It  is 
long  and  narrow  and  uncared  for,  pitted  with  deep 
holes,  and  speckled  with  hummocks.  Throughout 

l 


2  ZIONISM  AND  WORLD  POLITICS 

the  greater  part  of  the  year  it  is  an  unending  ditch 
of  black,  sticky  mud. 

Throughout  the  greater  part  of  the  year  came  these 
young  Jews  and  Jewesses — tramping,  tramping,  tramp¬ 
ing,  slowly,  painfully,  unflinchingly  on  their  way  to 
Palestine.  Often  their  feet  burst  through  their  worn 
shoes  or  are  so  swollen  that  they  cannot  bear  to  put 
shoes  upon  them;  their  clothes  are  rags,  and  they 
lean  upon  sticks  as  they  walk.  They  carry  no  food 
in  their  knapsacks  and  bundles,  and  there  is  no  money 
in  their  purses.  The  tavern-keeper  takes  them  in, 
gives  them  shelter  and,  so  well  as  he  can,  feeds  them. 
For  they  are  on  their  way  to  Palestine. 

They  are  very  young — these  pilgrims — some  no 
more  than  sixteen,  the  oldest  no  more  than  twenty- 
five.  Some  have  been  on  the  way  for  many,  many 
months;  others  have  come  quickly — in  a  day  or  two 
days.  They  come  from  everywhere.  One  may  be 
the  last  surviving  son  of  a  Berlin  manufacturer,  ruined 
by  the  Great  War.  Another  may  be  the  only  child  of  a 
merchant  of  Nijni  Novgorod;  a  third,  a  rabbinical  stu¬ 
dent  from  the  Yeshibah  at  Lodz ;  a  fourth,  an  ex-secretary 
of  the  Bund  in  Warsaw,  a  fifth,  a  medical  student; 
a  sixth,  a  musician — and  so  on.  Few  of  them  set 
out  in  companies.  Their  companies  form  and  dissolve 
by  the  wayside,  like  clouds  adrift  in  the  summer  sky. 
Each  reveals  a  spirit,  an  urge,  that  carries  his  frail 
body  on,  alone,  tramping,  tramping,  tramping  toward 
Palestine.  They  take  their  night’s  rest  in  the  tavern 
of  their  fellow- Jew,  and  in  the  morning  pass  on  their 
way  through  the  endless  mud  of  the  endless  road. 

Their  like  is  to  be  found  everywhere — in  Warsaw, 
in  Berlin,  in  Kovno,  in  Bukharest,  in  Kishineff,  in 


3 


PIONEER,  O  PIONEER 

Vienna,  in  Constantinople.  They  come  from  uni¬ 
versities  and  gymnasia,  from  Talmudical  colleges 
and  from  schools  of  music  and  art.  And  everywhere 
they  are  fed  and  housed  as  in  the  tavern  fifty  miles 
southward  of  Lemberg,  owned  and  managed  by  a 
Polish  Jew. 

Officers  of  the  Red  Cross,  agents  of  the  American 
Jewish  Relief  Committee,  emissaries  of  the  Zionist 
Organization  see  them  in  these  places  and  converse 
with  them.  They  ask  for  nothing,  save  to  be  helped 
as  quickly  as  possible  to  Palestine.  They  are  all  of 
high  sensibility  and  delicate  nurture.  They  have  all 
undergone  inconceivable  hardships;  some  have  suffered 
intolerable  indignities  on  their  long  way,  often  of  a 
thousand  miles,  on  foot.  They  speak  of  these  things 
without  bitterness,  without  complaint.  They  wish 
only  to  get  to  Palestine.  To  reach  Palestine  they  will 
endure  everything,  they  will  stop  at  nothing.  They 
have  heard  that  it  is  to  be  the  national  home  of  the 
Jewish  people.  They  have  dedicated  themselves  to 
build  it  up.  They  are  the  Halutzim ,  the  pioneers. 

To  them  who  know  the  story  they  bring  to  mind 
nothing  so  much  as  the  Children’s  Crusade. 

Yet  they  are  not  like  those  crusaders,  persons  of 
mediaeval  faith  and  believing  passion.  They  are  in¬ 
tellectuals,  with  the  scepticisms  and  the  deliberations 
of  the  modern  point  of  view  ingrained  in  their  mental 
habit  and  established  as  their  spiritual  method.  In 
their  regard  Palestine  has  been,  from  among  the  many 
alternatives  in  the  rebuilding  of  their  own  lives  and 
the  lives  of  the  peoples  of  Europe  out  of  the  ruins  of 
the  war,  their  considered  choice.  It  is  not  by  an 
alarum  that  they  are  moved.  If  in  them  the  House  of 


4 


ZIONISM  AND  WORLD  POLITICS 


Jacob  has  once  more  arisen  and  gone  forth,  it  is  because, 
they  say,  they  have  willed  that  it  should  be  so.  They 
are  at  once  the  embodiment,  the  victims  and  the 
vindicators  of  that  ever-young  passion  toward  Zion 
which  has  been  the  animating  spirit  of  the  Jew  through 
the  generations  and  which  now  seems  to  be  on  the 
threshold  of  its  consummation,  converting  the  Zionist 
into  the  Judean. 


CHAPTER  II 


THE  ORIGIN  AND  BASIS  OF  ZIONISM 

ZIONISM  is  the  contemporary  phase  of  an  unyield¬ 
ing  loyalty,  a  practical  idealism,  which  is  without 
parallel  in  European  history  for  constancy,  duration, 
and  force.  Crossed  by  all  the  currents  of  aspiration 
and  disillusion  that  were  the  changing  mind  of  Europe 
for  two  thousand  years,  this  loyalty  or  idealism  re¬ 
mained,  until  recently,  distinct  in  itself.  It  is  the 
Jewish  aspect,  older  than  its  setting,  of  that  hunger  * 
for  safety  and  happiness  which,  in  the  century  before 
the  beginning  of  the  Christian  era,  gripped  the  civiliza¬ 
tion  of  the  Mediterranean  in  an  other-worldly  grip, 
spread  in  later  years  to  all  Europe,  and  held  it,  with 
all  its  mutations,  to  the  present  day.  The  old  Zion¬ 
ism  whose  heart  is  the  hope  of  a  new  Zion  was  coeval 
with  the  moral  surrender  of  the  Stoic.  It  antedated 
the  passionate  other- worldliness  of  early  Christianity. 
It  confronted,  and  survived,  the  religious  imperialism 
of  the  Church  Triumphant  when  that  was  efficacious. 
It  underwent  the  impact  of  the  newer  protestant  order. 
It  met  the  challenge  and  fecundation  of  science  and 
free  thought,  of  naturalism  and  secularism.  And  it 
has  emerged,  more  essentially  continuous  with  itself, 
more  essentially  like  what  it  was  in  its  beginnings  than 
any  other  aspiration  or  adventure  which  the  great 
tradition  of  Europe  knows. 


5 


6 


ZIONISM  AND  WORLD  POLITICS 


Of  this  tradition  the  biography  of  Zionism  is  an 
integral  part,  both  soil  and  substance  of  its  ancient 
roots,  and  leaf  and  branch  of  its  spreading  life,  seeking 
the  free  air  and  the  sun.  Its  nature  is  at  once  that  of 
a  vision  and  that  of  an  adventure.  Of  a  vision,  be¬ 
cause  it  sets  forth  no  incarnate  and  existing  society, 
no  operating  association  of  men.  Of  an  adventure, 
because  it  never  altogether  lost  grips  with  reality, 
never  was  quite  cut  off  from  the  spot  of  tangible 
earth  which  might  be  not  only  sought,  but  found  and 
touched  and,  in  spite  of  all  disillusion,  loved,  in  the 
world  of  living  men  and  real  things.  To  make  this 
spot  of  earth  once  more  theirs  in  fact  as  it  was  in 
spirit,  men  and  women  of  Jewish  blood,  generation 
after  generation,  during  two  thousand  years,  abandoned 
their  all  and  went  apilgrimming  toward  the  Promised 
^  Land.  Zionism  is  simply  to-day’s  phase  of  the  un¬ 
yielding  effort  of  the  Jewish  people  to  make  good  the 
Promise  of  the  Promised  Land. 

This  Promised  Land,  glamour  though  much  of  it  is, 
is  yet  no  Land  of  Beulah,  no  Kingdom  of  Heaven  in 
regions  supernal.  It  is  a  definite  piece  of  the  earth’s 
surface,  of  definite  dimensions,  bordering  on  the  Mediter¬ 
ranean  and  lying  at  the  junction  of  the  three  conti¬ 
nental  masses  of  the  Eastern  Hemisphere.  It  has  been 
the  battle  ground  of  the  civilizations  of  antiquity. 
It  has  been  the  motherland  of  the  dominant  religions 
of  the  western  world.  The  names  of  its  mountains 
and  its  valleys,  of  its  cities  and  towns  and  villages, 
have  been  woven  into  the  texture  of  the  mind  of  Europe. 
For  a  thousand  years  its  chief  city  was  regarded  as 
the  centre  of  the  very  universe  and  all  its  places  as  holy 
places.  Yet  important  as  has  been  the  role  of  these 


THE  ORIGIN  AND  BASIS  OF  ZIONISM  7 


and  of  the  land  that  holds  them  in  the  life  of  mankind, 
that  importance  is  of  small  degree  beside  the  role 
of  this  land  in  the  life  and  labours  of  the  Jewish  people. 
It  is  from  the  latter,  in  fact,  that  the  former  derives. 
Palestine  has  been  the  centre  of  the  Jewish  theory 
of  life  and  the  Jews’  outlook  on  the  world.  Their 
national  tradition  is  built  around  it.  Entering  it, 
staying  in  it,  being  driven  from  it,  returning  to  it, 
are  the  instigating  motives  of  their  historic  narratives, 
of  their  prophetic  books,  of  their  psalms,  their  liturgy, 
their  prayers,  their  collective  endeavour  in  the  com¬ 
munity  of  mankind.  No  people  in  history  has  identi¬ 
fied  itself  in  joy  and  in  sorrow,  and  always  in  aspiration, 
so  completely  with  a  single  land,  and  a  land  which  the 
great  majority  of  their  generations  have  known  only 
in  prayer,  in  idea,  in  vision,  for  a  thousand  years. 

This  identification  is  itself  a  universally  accepted 
commonplace  of  the  great  tradition  of  the  Western 
world.  The  connection  between  the  Jew  and  Palestine, 
the  connection  between  Palestine  and  the  Jew  is 
customary,  natural,  a  matter  of  course  even  to  the 
least  literate  of  Europeans.  So,  also,  by  and  large, 
is  the  reunion  of  these  two  that  have  been  sepa¬ 
rated. 

The  original  source  of  these  commonplaces  of  the 
European  mind  is  of  course  that  body  of  varied  docu¬ 
ments,  sacred  to  Jew  and  Christian  alike:  the  Bible. 
A  secondary  but  equally  potent  source  is  Christian 
theology.  According  to  the  biblical  narrative,  the 
history  of  the  Jews  as  a  people  may  be  said  to  begin 
with  the  hope  of  the  Promised  Land,  with  the  conscious¬ 
ness  of  a  goal  to  be  attained  collectively,  in  return  for 
the  assumption  of  a  collective  obligation  to  a  super- 


8 


ZIONISM  AND  WORLD  POLITICS 


natural  being.  This  consciousness  in  the  course  of 
time  converted  a  congeries  of  tribes  into  a  nation,  and 
the  nation  into  a  self-conscious  aspirant  toward  that 
righteousness  without  which  must  come  disaster. 
Israel,  in  a  word,  regarded  himself  as  a  “chosen  people.” 
Between  him  and  Jehovah  there  is  a  contract.  Israel 
is  to  devote  himself  to  the  exclusive  service  and  worship 
of  Jehovah:  Jehovah,  in  return,  is  to  lead  Israel  to 
the  Promised  Land,  to  keep  him  and  to  prosper  him 
there.  The  service  and  worship  of  Jehovah  and  the 
prosperity  and  growth  of  the  nation  in  Zion  were  func¬ 
tions  of  one  another.  How,  under  the  influence  of 
the  changes  from  a  nomadic  to  an  agricultural  order 
of  life,  the  nature  and  terms  of  the  contract  changed; 
how,  under  the  propaganda  of  the  prophets,  from  Amos 
to  Isaiah,  ritual  in  the  service  of  Jehovah  was  replaced 
by  righteousness;  how  national  security  became  cor¬ 
relative,  in  idea  at  least,  with  social  justice,  are  com¬ 
monplaces  of  all  critical  histories  of  the  ancient  Jews. 
Already  in  Amos  the  prophetic  philosophy  of  history  is 
manifest:  Divine  Law  requires  justice  and  loving¬ 
kindness  between  men  and  states;  disobedience  of  this 
law  is  followed  by  disaster,  brought  through  God’s 
will  by  one  state  upon  another,  all  states  and  kings  be¬ 
ing  merely  the  tools  and  servants  of  God.  This  philos¬ 
ophy  is  already  ripe  in  the  sermons  of  Jeremiah,  but 
tradition  accords  supreme  excellence  to  the  expression 
given  it  by  the  second  Isaiah.  Applied  to  the  domes¬ 
tic  history  and  foreign  relations  of  the  Jewish  state, 
it  interpreted  national  defeat  at  the  hands  of  enemies 
of  Israel  as  the  consequence  of  domestic  iniquity,  and 
national  survival  and  national  victory  as  coincident 
with  domestic  righteousness.  Righteousness  became 


THE  ORIGIN  AND  BASIS  OF  ZIONISM  9 


the  condition  of  political  and  military  security.  Ex¬ 
pulsion  from  the  Promised  Land  was,  hence,  the  con¬ 
sequence  of  sin,  and  return  thereto  would  be  the  reward 
of  a  return  to  righteousness. 

Events  subjected  this  philosophy  to  a  drastic  test. 
That  it  did  not  possess  a  monopoly  over  the  thinkers 
of  Israel  may  be  seen  from  the  theory  of  life  promul¬ 
gated  in  the  Book  of  Job,  which  divorces  fortune  from 
morals  altogether,  but  there  is  in  the  prophetic  theory  a 
certain  compensatory  dimension,  a  quality  of  consola¬ 
tion  and  justification,  which  renders  it  more  relevant 
than  the  Joban  theory  to  the  aboriginal  hopes  of  men 
and  to  Nature’s  disregard  of  them.  Carried  to  its 
logical  limit,  it  must  lead  the  man  who  has  been  right¬ 
eous  but  unfortunate  all  his  life  to  the  conception  of 
another  life  and  another  world  beyond  Nature,  in 
which  he  will  be  fortunate  as  well  as  righteous,  and 
in  which  the  wicked  will  be  unfortunate  as  well  as 
wicked.  This  is  precisely  what  Christianity,  once 
extended  beyond  the  bounds  of  Jewry,  did.  But  the 
Jews  then  and  there  did  not  go  so  far.  For  them, 
reward  and  punishment  were  here  and  now,  where 
sin  and  virtue  were,  and  the  hope  of  good  fortune  for 
the  righteous  was  a  hope  for  this  world  and  not  another. 
Particularly  was  this  the  case  for  a  whole  people,  a 
nation,  whose  span  of  life  overarches  the  brief  mor¬ 
tality  of  the  individual.  The  people  of  Israel,  banished 
from  its  land  for  its  unrighteousness,  should  be  restored 
for  its  righteousness.  This  was  Jehovah’s  promise, 
and  in  this  promise  his  people  might  take  comfort. 
The  restoration  would  be  bodily,  political,  physical. 
It  would  install  an  era  of  international  peace  and  in¬ 
ternational  comity,  the  rule  of  law  replacing  the 


10  ZIONISM  AND  WORLD  POLITICS 

rule  of  force  and  the  life  of  cooperation,  the  life  of 
conflict. 

And  it  shall  come  to  pass  in  the  end  of  days, 

That  the  mountain  of  the  Lord’s  house  shall  be  estab¬ 
lished  in  the  top  of  the  mountains, 

And  shall  be  exalted  above  the  hills; 

And  all  nations  shall  flow  into  it. 

And  many  people  shall  go  and  say : 

“  Come  ye,  and  let  us  go  up  to  the  mountain  of  the  Lord, 
To  the  house  of  the  God  of  Jacob; 

And  he  will  teach  us  of  His  ways 
And  we  will  walk  in  His  paths.” 

For  out  of  Zion  shall  go  forth  the  law, 

And  the  word  of  the  Lord  from  Jerusalem. 

And  He  shall  judge  between  the  nations 
And  shall  decide  for  many  peoples; 

And  they  shall  beat  their  swords  into  ploughshares 
And  their  spears  into  pruning-hooks; 

Nation  shall  not  lift  up  sword  against  nation. 

Neither  shall  they  learn  war  any  more.1 

Dithyrambs  such  as  this,  of  different  imagery,  but 
of  the  same  identical  spirit  and  outlook,  are  scattered 
throughout  all  the  prophetic  books.  They  are  the 
well-springs  of  subsequent  Jewish  speculation  about 
the  nature  and  destiny  of  the  Jewish  people,  from  the 
primal  passions  of  the  prophets  to  the  sophisticated 
formulations  of  modern  Jewish  theology-mongers. 
The  conception  of  the  “mission’’  of  Israel,  which  the 
latter  make  so  much  of,  springs  from  them,  and  the 
Jewish  repudiation  of  that  conception  springs  equally 
from  them.  They  underlie  the  Jew’s  loyalty  to  his 
law  or  Torah ,  and  the  invincible  optimism  with  which 
the  mass  of  the  Jewish  people  have  clung  to  it.  “This 


Isaiah  n,  1-5. 


THE  ORIGIN  AND  BASIS  OF  ZIONISM  11 

is  the  law,”  says  the  daily  prayer,  “which  Moses  set 
before  the  Children  of  Israel,  according  to  the  word 
of  the  Lord.  To  all  who  cling  unto  her,  she  is  a  tree 
of  life,  and  it  is  well  with  those  who  depend  upon  her. 
Her  ways  are  ways  of  kindness,  and  all  her  surrounding 
is  peace.”  The  real  and  adequate  practice  of  the  law, 
however,  the  prayer-book  also  tells  us,  can  be  achieved 
only  in  the  Promised  Land,  nor  can  the  law  prevail 
among  the  nations  until  the  restoration  to  the  Promised 
Land  is  accomplished. 

This  restoration,  from  the  first  exile  in  the  seventh 
century  before  the  beginning  of  the  Christian  era 
through  the  first  millennium  after  it,  is  conceived  in 
political  terms.  The  prophets,  indeed,  are  politicians 
and  statesmen,  concerning  themselves  with  both 
domestic  and  foreign  problems,  and  using  “the  word 
of  the  Lord”  as  authority  for  their  political  doctrine 
and  social  policy.  The  “law”  which  they  preached, 
as  we  have  it  in  Deuteronomy  and  Leviticus,  is  an 
obvious  response  to  the  challenge  of  the  injustices  of 
ancient — and  for  that  matter,  of  modern — society. 
The  ideal  of  international  peace  under  a  general  law 
for  all  nations  is  the  outcome  of  the  bitter  political 
experience  of  a  small  state  situated  at  the  junction 
point  between  the  competing  military  imperialisms 
of  Asia  and  Africa.  The  Prophets  were  nothing  if 
not  realpolitiker  with  a  passion  for  the  preservation  of 
Israel  for  Zion  and  of  Zion  for  Israel,  and  they  grew 
to  realize  that  the  only  device  by  which  this  could  be 
secured  was  an  international  order  and  a  single  law. 
After  the  manner  of  the  ancients,  they  attributed 
to  this  law  a  divine  origin  and  sanction,  and  described 
its  rule  as  the  rule  of  God.  But  the  substance  of  their 


n  ZIONISM  AND  WORLD  POLITICS 


vision  is  not  other  than  that  of  the  vision  of  all  interna¬ 
tionalists  who  regard  the  realities  of  the  relations 
between  nations  and  states  and  hope  for  their  improve¬ 
ment.  It  was  evoked  by  the  same  recurrent  causes: 
how  could  it  have  other  than  the  same  essence? 

Their  glory  is  that  they  were  the  first  in  all  the 
world  to  envisage  and  to  utter  that  essence,  but  they 
uttered  it,  none  the  less,  out  of  the  fervour  of  their 
patriotism,  and  not  because  they  had  blurred  the  living 
diversities  of  mankind  in  an  unreal  abstraction,  labelled 
“humanity.”  Prophetic  “universalism”  did  not  abol¬ 
ish  the  nations,  it  harmonized  the  nations;  and  it  was 
nationalistic  to  the  point  of  giving  to  Israel  a  dominant 
tone  in  the  international  harmony,  and  to  Zion  the 
foremost  place.  Indeed,  when  it  was  most  “universal,” 
it  was  most  actively  nationalistic,  for  the  rhythms 
of  deutero-Isaiah,  the  utterances  of  Zechariah  and  of 
Haggai  framed  the  conspiracy  to  restore  the  indepen¬ 
dence  of  the  Kingdom  with  Zerubbabel,  servant  of  the 
Lord,  scion  of  the  House  of  David,  for  King.1  Behind 
the  conspiracy  was  an  urge  to  independence  and  to 
freedom  from  the  foreign  yoke  which  never  subsided 
so  long  as  there  was  the  semblance  of  a  Jewish  govern¬ 
ment  in  Palestine.  When  prophet  gave  way  to  priest 
as  the  master  of  the  mind  of  Judea,  it  was  the  uncon¬ 
scious  cause  of  the  friction  between  the  native  and 
the  foreign  administrations.  It  underlay  the  succes¬ 
sive  resistances,  both  spiritual  and  physical,  to  Persian 
and  Greek  conquerors.  It  animated  the  Hasmonean 
uprising  and  found  itself  in  the  Hasmonean  indepen¬ 
dence,  and  when  the  alliance  with  Rome  which  was  to 
guard  that  independence  became  its  ravisher,  it  took 


xZechariah  vi,  9-15. 


THE  ORIGIN  AND  BASIS  OF  ZIONISM  13 

the  form  of  the  new  schisms  within  the  state;  the  re¬ 
sistance  to  Herod,  the  hope  of  a  champion,  of  a  Messiah 
like  Judas  Maccabseus;  the  rebellion  against  Titus 
and  the  final  uprising  and  brief  success  of  Bar  Kochba. 
Even  after  the  terrible  revenge  which  the  imperial 
government  took  for  that  uprising,  the  will  of  the  Jews 
for  a  free  Zion  remained  unbroken.  Oppressed  and 
persecuted  by  emperor  after  emperor,  particularly 
after  Christianity  had  become  the  imperial  religion, 
they  had  strength  enough  to  join  in  the  seventh  cen¬ 
tury  the  invading  Persians  against  the  Romans,  in 
the  hope  of  reestablishing  their  ancient  state.  That 
hope  was  again  disappointed.  When  the  country  re¬ 
verted  to  Byzantium,  the  monks  persuaded  the  Em¬ 
peror  Heraclius  to  exterminate  the  Jews.  Those  who 
escaped  joined  their  brethren  in  Egypt  and  elsewhere 
in  the  mediterranean  world,  to  hope  anew. 

The  most  lasting  thing  which  these  exiles,  like  all 
their  kind,  carried  with  them  was,  then,  this  hope  of 
the  restoration  to  Palestine.  It  dominated  the  liturgy 
and  the  poetry  of  the  exile;  it  governed  Jewish  policy 
and  suffused  the  Jewish  outlook.  It  underlies  the 
organization  of  the  Jewish  communal  economy,  con¬ 
tributing  elements  in  the  practice  of  the  ritual  and  the 
observation  of  the  seasons.  For  a  thousand  years  it 
continued  to  be  an  aspiration  of  practical  political 
import,  reenforced  with  religious  faith.  Wherever  a 
Jewish  community  was  to  be  found,  then  as  now,  the 
prayer  could  be  heard:  “For  our  sins  have  we  been 
banished  from  our  country  and  removed  far  from  our 
land,”  together  with  the  invocation  for  the  return  to 
Zion,  for  the  reestablishment  of  the  Davidic  throne,  for 
the  realization  of  the  prophetic  pledge.  “We  cannot,” 


14  ZIONISM  AND  WORLD  POLITICS 


says  the  prayer,  “in  our  banishment  serve  Thee  accord¬ 
ing  to  Thy  commandment.”  “Next  year  in  Jerusalem,” 
is  a  change  rung  again  and  again  in  the  liturgy  both 
of  week  days  and  Sabbaths,  and  of  holydays.  It  links 
itself  with  the  political  activities  of  a  whole  millennium : 
hardly  a  century  passed  in  which  the  Jews  of  one  coun¬ 
try  or  another  were  not  called  upon  by  a  self-proclaimed 
Messiah  to  gird  up  their  loins  and,  by  miracle  or  mili¬ 
tancy,  win  back  to  Zion.  In  fifth-century  Crete,  one 
Moses,  assuming  miracles,  led  his  people  into  the  sea, 
where  most  were  drowned.  David  Alroy,  again  in 
the  twelfth  century,  actually  succeeded  in  developing 
a  military  adventure  strong  enough  six  hundred  years 
later  to  rouse  the  imagination  of  Beaconsfield,  who 
made  a  novel  about  him.  The  expectancy  of  a  political 
restoration,  under  the  leadership  of  an  earthly  Messiah, 
was  a  commonplace  in  the  mood  of  Europe.  It  is 
sharply  evinced  in  the  tenth-century  letter  of  Chasdai 
ibn  Shaprut  to  the  King  of  the  Chazars,  judaized  by 
conversion;  and  it  is  literally  accepted  by  non- Jewish 
Europe.  To  the  Christian  mind,  no  less  than  to  the 
Jewish,  Palestine  is  the  Jewish  land  and  the  Jews  are 
the  Palestinian  people,  foreign  to  Europe,  absent  from 
their  own  land,  and  in  the  fulness  of  time  to  be  returned 
to  it.  The  equity  of  the  Jew  in  Palestine  has  remained 
a  strand  in  the  great  tradition  of  the  Christian  world. 
The  return  of  this  chosen  people  to  this  promised  land 
was  regarded  by  multitudes  as  an  essential  preliminary 
to  the  second  coming  of  the  Saviour,  and  the  fulfilment 
of  the  forecasts  of  Christian  eschatology.  To  Chris¬ 
tians  of  the  first  millennium  this  return  was  more 
deeply  implicated  in  a  system  of  supernaturalism  than 
to  the  Jews,  but  however  implicated,  it  was  expected. 


THE  ORIGIN  AND  BASIS  OF  ZIONISM  15 


The  development  and  final  enthronement  of  a  similar 
supernaturalism  among  the  Jews  were  accomplished 
in  the  twelfth  century.  The  position  of  the  Jews  in 
European  countries  grew  steadily  worse.  Disability 
and  persecution  were  multiplied,  and  the  temper  of 
the  Crusades  brought  them  to  a  climax.  Under  the 
circumstances,  the  notion  of  a  naturalistic,  though 
divinely  predetermined,  restoration  which  should  be 
salvation  from  horror  and  evil,  could  not  withstand 
the  assault  of  misfortune.  That  the  restoration  must 
come,  the  Jews  of  the  world  became  more  and  more 
convinced:  how  else  could  Israel  escape  alive  out  of 
the  inferno  which  the  Church  Militant  had  made  for 
them  of  their  lives?  But  that  it  could  come  out  of 
their  own  strength,  a  natural  eventuality  of  the  pro¬ 
cess  of  history,  was  no  longer  conceivable.  They 
were  too  weak,  too  battered,  impotent  against  their 
persecutors.  Only  the  might  of  a  miracle  could  save 
them  and  restore  them.  And  as  the  figure  and  mode 
of  their  salvation  had  already  been  established  in 
tradition  and  legend  as  Messiah  the  son  of  David, 
this  Messiah  acquired  a  more  and  more  supernatural 
character. 

Already  in  the  beginnings  of  the  Messianic  legend 
there  had  been  a  potential  differentiation  between  an 
earthly  and  a  heavenly  Messiah.  The  failure  of 
the  earthly  Messiahship  of  the  leader  of  the  little  sect 
that  later  developed  into  the  Christian  multitude  led 
to  the  immediate  compensation  of  the  other-worldly 
ideal  which  is  the  Messiahship  of  the  Christian;  salva¬ 
tion  from  evil  and  happiness  both  became  heavenly 
things:  earth  was  regarded  as  a  trial  and  a  transition, 
to  be  abandoned  and  spurned.  The  Messiah  was  God 


16  ZIONISM  AND  WORLD  POLITICS 


and  the  Son  of  God,  miserable  on  earth  but  omnipotent 
in  the  universe.  This  ideal  denial  of  real  failure  the 
Jews  had  refused  to  accept.  They  fought  and  hoped 
on  for  twelve  hundred  years.  And  when,  finally, 
misfortune  and  the  contagion  from  their  intellectual 
and  emotional  setting  made  other-worldliness  a  part 
of  their  outlook,  it  did  not  become  the  overruling 
part.  The  Messiah  became  a  supernatural  figure 
indeed,  preexisting,  and  destined  to  conquer  the  enemy 
and  persecutor  and  to  restore  Israel  by  means  of  miracle, 
but  the  end  achieved  was  still  to  be  a  natural  and  his¬ 
toric  end  continuous  with  the  rest  of  the  movement 
of  history,  even  if  the  means  were  to  be  discontinuous 
and  supernatural.  From  the  twelfth  century  on,  the 
self-proclaimed  Messiahs  are  more  and  more  miracle- 
workers,  philosophasters,  men  of  a  psychopathic  strain. 
Their  moral  and  intellectual  settings  are  misery,  magic, 
and  mysticism,  the  two  latter  being  the  complement 
of,  and  escape  from,  the  former.  For  the  same  reason 
the  puerilities  of  the  Kabbala  became  constitutional 
to  their  outlook  and  Kabbalism  itself  a  dominant  in¬ 
fluence  on  the  mind  and  fortunes  of  Jewry.  But  the 
misery  and  the  compensatory  supernaturalism  reached 
their  height  in  the  seventeenth  century.  Their  symbol 
was  the  false  or  pseudo-Messiah,  Sabbattai  Zevi  of 
Smyrna.  Only  that  he  was  a  charlatan,  weak  and 
without  integrity,  not  that  he  was  a  false  Messiah, 
must  be  regarded  a  reproach  to  him.  All  Messiahs 
are  false  when  they  fail,  for  the  success  of  works,  not 
faith,  is  the  only  proof  of  true  Messiahship,  and  how  is 
the  success  of  works  to  be  achieved  by  the  means  and 
attributes  of  the  Messiahs  of  thaumaturgy?  The 
importance  of  Sabbattai  Zevi  was  due  to  the  European 


THE  ORIGIN  AND  BASIS  OF  ZIONISM  17 


character  of  his  influence.  Not  only  Jews  fell  under 
it.  It  touched  statecraft  and  affected  the  policies 
of  the  world.  It  is  the  ironic  and  picturesque  expira¬ 
tion  of  a  period  in  the  history  of  the  European  struggle 
for  democracy. 


CHAPTER  III 


RELIGIOUS  IMPERIALISM  AND  THE  JEWISH  POSITION 

THE  year  1648  is  a  momentous  one  in  the  history  of 
Europe.  It  is  the  year  of  the  Peace  of  W estphalia  and  of 
the  formation  of  the  Puritan  Commonwealth  in  England. 
It  marks  the  end  of  over  a  hundred  years  of  warfare 
and  the  final  overthrow  of  a  political  principle  which 
had  dominated  Europe  to  its  hurt  since  the  Council 
of  Nicsea,  in  the  325th  year  of  the  Christian  era.  This 
was  so  built  into  the  social  system  of  the  Christian 
world  that  much  of  the  history  of  this  world  might 
be  described  as  a  narrative  of  the  methods  hit  upon  or 
chosen  to  evade  or  oppose  it.  The  principle  might 
be  designated,  briefly,  as  the  principle  of  religious 
imperialism.  It  was  a  new  thing  when  it  was  promul¬ 
gated.  The  ancient  and  pagan  world  knew  nothing 
about  it.  It  came  to  Europe  as  a  logical  implication 
of  the  Christian  philosophy  of  life,  and  the  status 
and  fate  of  the  Jews  were  closely  bound  up  with  it. 
Although  the  religions  of  the  states  of  antiquity,  Athens, 
or  Sparta,  or  Corinth,  or  Judea,  or  Rome,  were  state 
religions,  they  did  not  imply  intolerance  toward  the 
gods  of  other  states,  particularly  when  those  states 
were  not  at  war.  Between  these  gods  and  their  wor¬ 
shippers  there  was  held  to  be  a  certain  community, 
looking  back  to  a  community  of  blood,  which  gave 
the  gods  a  prerogative  and  monopoly  on  the  reverence 

18 


THE  JEWISH  POSITION 


19 


and  worship  of  the  citizens,  and  the  citizens  a  claim 
to  priority  on  the  good-will  and  protection  of  the  gods. 
All  gods,  as  we  see  most  conspicuously  in  the  case  of 
Jehovah,  had  certain  tribal,  civic,  national  predilections 
and  obligations,  even  when  most  universal  and  all- 
embracing  in  their  divinities.  They  remained  to  a 
great  degree  chthonic,  with  larger  powers  and  jurisdic¬ 
tion  over  special  places,  and  very  specific  centres  of 
worship  and  residence.  The  men  of  the  ancient  world 
expressed  this  divine  economy  by  paying  due  reverence 
to  the  gods  of  the  lands  in  which  they  travelled  or  so¬ 
journed.  Even  military  conquerors,  like  Alexander, 
in  a  day  so  late  as  his,  worshipped  at  the  shrines  of  the 
divinities  whose  lands  they  had  devastated  and  im¬ 
plored  them  for  favour  and  cooperation.  Later  and 
more  sophisticated  times  retained  this  sense  of  chthonic 
over-lordship,  and  the  Romans  made  it  a  practice  to 
remove  the  religious  holies  from  the  lands  of  their 
conquest  to  appropriate  sanctuaries  in  Rome.  The  pro¬ 
tective  power  of  the  divinities,  it  was  supposed,  would 
then  accrue  to  the  state  of  their  domicile.  Thus  pagan 
Rome  was  not  only  tolerant  of,  but  hospitable  to, 
the  diversity  of  religions  and  of  the  nationalities  of 
which  religions  were  among  the  distinguishing  marks. 
The  growth  of  the  empire,  in  fact,  exercised  in  this 
regard  a  liberalizing  influence,  in  that  it  necessitated 
a  very  large  degree  of  differentiation  between  citizen¬ 
ship  and  cult.  Because  of  the  tribal  background  of  the 
small  city-states  and  of  their  tradition  of  blood- 
brotherhood  and  common  ancestry,  an  alien  could 
rarely  become  a  citizen,  even  in  Athens,  the  freest 
of  them:  he  could  only  be  a  righteous  stranger,  as  the 
Bible  has  it,  a  sojourner,  entitled  to  justice,  but  not  to 


20  ZIONISM  AND  WORLD  POLITICS  N 

participation  in  the  intimacies  of  the  state’s  life. 
The  empire  founded  by  Alexander,  which  had  a  sharply 
conscious  missionary  character,  continued  this  tradi¬ 
tion.  Although  it  imposed  Greek  forms  of  political 
and  social  organization  and  Greek  habits  of  life  and 
thought  upon  the  mediterranean  world,  it  did  not 
establish  a  common  citizenship  which  should  be  de¬ 
tached  from  the  local  society  wherein  the  privileges 
of  citizenship  had  to  be  predominantly  exercised. 
This  was  an  achievement  of  Roman  imperialism. 

Roman  imperialism,  preoccupied  from  the  outset 
with  maintaining  the  Roman  hegemony,  the  pax 
Romana  of  the  Roman  legions  and  the  Roman  law, 
left  local  customs  and  practices  intact,  indeed  sub¬ 
sidized  and  encouraged  them.  Nationalities  and 
cults  flourished  and  had  heyday  in  the  empire  so 
long  as  they  were  considered  not  to  be  dangerous  to  the 
state.  Until  the  advent  of  Christianity  there  were 
no  religious  persecutions  in  Rome.  There  was  police 
and  military  action  against  political  criminals,  who 
practised  or  were  supposed  to  practise  a  doctrine 
subversive  of  loyalty  to  the  state.  Otherwise,  freedom 
of  thought,  of  belief  and  cult  was,  as  in  some  places 
in  recent  times,  untrammelled.  Had  they  not  been, 
Christianism  never  could  have  made  headway  against 
its  rivals.  When,  for  reasons  of  his  own,  Constantine 
made  Christianism  the  religion  of  the  state,  the  empire 
was  thrown  back  to  the  position  of  the  city-state 
which  it  had  outgrown,  and  worse.  This  deteriorative 
reversion  was  inevitable  from  the  assumptions  of 
Christianity  itself.  For  these  assumptions  the  Judaism 
of  the  priests,  as  distinguished  from  the  Hebraism 
of  the  prophets,  has  its  own  responsibility.  So  long 


THE  JEWISH  POSITION 


21 


as  men  admit  that  alternatives  are  possible  to  any 
theories  or  doctrines  they  may  entertain,  the  rigours  of 
intolerance  and  the  arrogances  of  infallibility  cannot 
develop.  Experience  remains  the  court  of  last  re¬ 
sort  in  the  judgment  of  truth.  Truth  remains  a  thing 
not  primary  but  eventual,  and  this  eventuality  in  the 
knowledge  of  what  is  true  and  what  is  false  among 
alternatives  keeps  them  more  or  less  equal,  and  bars 
intolerance.  This  was  the  case  with  the  congeries  of 
national  divinities  of  most  of  the  city-states  of  the 
ancient  world.  With  hieratic  Judaism  there  came, 
however,  a  difference.  It  assumed  the  sole  and  ex¬ 
clusive  right  to  the  acquisition  and  possession  of  the 
truth,  as  revelation.  Everything  else,  consequently, 
no  matter  what  it  was,  nor  how  or  where  it  came  from, 
had  to  be  regarded  as  error.  Truth  being  given 
finally  and  completely,  its  possessor  was  infallible, 
and  debate,  experiment,  the  whole  intellectual  enter¬ 
prise,  the  scientific  attitude  of  mind,  became  malice 
and  perversity.  Difference  became  either  concealed 
agreement  or  blasphemous  defence  of  error.  For 
people  to  whom  Holy  Scripture  was  the  sum  and  sub¬ 
stance  of  all  wisdom,  the  philosophers  and  scientists 
must  needs  be  either  its  interpreters  or  its  enemies, 
and  were  so  held. 

When  the  Christian  sectaries  made  of  the  script 
which  had  become  to  the  Jews  the  revealed  word  of 
God  their  own  holy,  adding  thereto  the  New  Testament, 
they  also  made  their  own  the  assumption  of  infallibility 
of  hieratic  Judaism.  The  adoption  of  Christianity 
as  the  state  religion  gave  them  the  force  wherewith 
to  make  this  assumption  effective.  Citizenship  be¬ 
came  conditional  on  conformity  to  certain  artificial 


22 


ZIONISM  AND  WORLD  POLITICS 


standards  of  right  doctrine,  those  opinions  which 
failed  to  conform  being,  ex  hypothesi ,  false,  and  the 
judges  of  the  failure  being  the  ruling  class  to  whom 
the  guardianship  of  the  standards  had  accrued.  The 
Jews  were,  by  the  implications  of  the  fundamental 
doctrines  of  Christianity,  non-conformists,  and  hence 
without  title  to  citizenship.  Imperial  edict  deprived 
them  of  it  in  the  year  339,  and  the  bulk  of  them  have 
remained  thus  deprived  to  the  present  day.  In  the 
course  of  time  all  infidels,  non-conformists,  dissenters, 
heretics,  became  automatically  outlaws,  and  a  large 
portion  of  the  history  of  European  civilization  is  the 
history  of  an  attempt,  on  the  one  side  to  crush  them 
out,  by  fire  and  sword,  on  the  other  side  to  compel 
their  acquiescence  by  force  or  persuasion.  No  doubt 
other  motives  than  the  religious  were  involved;  no 
doubt  the  latter  was  often  used  as  an  excuse  for  other 
types  of  greed  and  aggression,  but  until  the  Reforma¬ 
tion  and  after,  it  remained  the  foremost  in  the  con¬ 
sciousness  of  Europe. 

To  the  consciousness  of  Europe  the  world  was  basic¬ 
ally  an  Augustinian  epic.  Eternal  and  Omnipotent 
God,  it  held,  had  created  in  six  days’  time  a  perfect 
world.  This  perfection  would  never  have  lapsed  if 
Adam  had  not  of  his  own  free  will  disobeyed  the  com¬ 
mand  of  Eternal  and  Omnipotent  God.  His  disobedi¬ 
ence  brought  death  into  the  world  and  all  our  woe. 
It  caused  his  banishment  from  Paradise.  The  sin, 
original  with  him,  became  a  hereditary,  constitutional, 
outstanding  element  in  the  nature  of  all  his  offspring. 
All,  together  with  the  world  God  made  for  them,  were 
deserving  of,  and  under  God’s  justice  were  predestined 
to,  eternal  destruction,  had  God’s  mercy  not  prevailed 


THE  JEWISH  POSITION 


23 


against  God’s  justice  and  provided  atonement.  At 
various  times,  hence,  he  manifested  himself  to  a 
selected  portion  of  the  sons  of  Man,  to  the  seed  of 
Abraham,  namely.  To  these  he  delivered  his  law, 
with  the  view  of  an  eventual  atonement  for  Adam’s 
original  sin,  and  the  redemption  of  man  from  the  pen¬ 
alty  of  it.  Hence  the  incarnation  and  the  crucifixion. 
These  are  the  atonement,  vicarious  of  course,  but  none 
the  less  the  salvation  of  those  predestined  to  believe. 
Such,  predestinate  from  the  beginning  of  time,  are  the 
citizens  of  the  City  of  God,  of  the  Church  catholic, 
universal.  All  others  are  citizens  of  the  City  of  the 
World.  The  Jews,  particularly,  belong  to  this  latter 
city.  They  had  been  God’s  first  chosen.  To  them 
he  had  revealed  himself,  with  them  had  made  his  cove¬ 
nant,  to  them  had  sent  as  Messiah  his  only-begotten 
son  who  was  only  another  form  of  himself,  for  the  re¬ 
demption  of  sin -cursed  mankind.  And  they  had  re¬ 
jected  the  Messiah  and  had  had  him  nailed  to  the  cross. 
For  this  God  rejected  them  in  their  turn  and  cursed 
them  to  live  under  the  ban  of  his  rejection,  outcast 
from  the  community  of  the  saved,  plying  forbidden 
vocations  in  disaster  and  dispersion  until  the  second 
coming  of  the  Messiah  of  the  Lord,  and  the  restoration 
at  his  hands. 

This  eschatology,  furthermore,  was  inextricably 
interwoven  with  the  social  system  of  the  feudal  order, 
a  system  that  has  its  maximum  ideal  expression  in  the 
bull  XJnam  Sanctam.  It  is  a  thing  of  logic  tempered 
by  rebellion,  resting  consciously  in  metaphysics  as 
few  social  systems  have.  Its  basis  is  the  omnipotence 
of  God,  without  whose  sustaining  grace  nothing  can 
be  or  come  to  be.  But  this  sustaining  grace  is  not 


24 


ZIONISM  AND  WORLD  POLITICS 


regarded  as  being  distributed  equally  and  impartially 
among  all  the  children  of  God.  Existence  is  a  hier- 
achy  and  its  parts  are  related  as  the  links  of  a  pendent 
chain.  Each  hangs  from  the  other,  without  which 
it  would  fall  into  the  abyss.  Since  the  greatest  strain 
is  on  the  highest  link,  in  that  must  be  concentrated 
the  greatest  power,  and  as  there  is  no  strain  to  speak 
of  on  the  lowest  link,  least  power  is  needed  or  belongs 
in  that.  The  highest  link,  directly  pendent  on  God, 
is  the  Pope,  his  vicegerent  on  earth,  the  visible  symbol 
and  concretion  of  the  Church  universal.  In  him, 
consequently,  must  be  the  maximum  concentration 
of  the  grace  of  God.  From  him  it  passes  downward 
and  outward,  to  the  princes  of  the  Church  and  the 
temporal  power,  like  light  decreasing  in  intensity  with 
its  distance  from  the  source,  so  that  when  it  finally 
reaches  the  peasant  serf  there  is  enough  left  for  the 
sacraments  of  baptism,  confirmation,  marriage,  and 
burial,  but  nothing  else.  Everybody  in  society  de¬ 
pends  on  somebody  higher  up,  and  woe  to  the  man  who 
has  no  overlord  to  depend  upon.  He  is  a  “masterless 
man,”  without  status  or  right,  the  prey  of  any  power 
strong  enough  to  seize  him. 

The  enforcement  of  this  social  system,  save  in  the 
case  of  the  serfs  and  the  Jews,  was  never  complete. 
The  temporal  struggled  against  the  arrogations  of  the 
ecclesiastical  power,  emperors  against  popes,  kings 
against  emperors,  noblemen  of  lesser  rank  against 
kings,  cities  against  dynasts,  and  on  occasion  even  the 
peasants  rose.  The  great  majority  of  these  conflicts 
were,  however,  conflicts  within  a  framework  of  unanim¬ 
ity.  The  hand  of  every  man  was  against  the  infidel, 
the  dissenter,  the  non-conformist.  The  Inquisition 


THE  JEWISH  POSITION 


25 


was  as  impartial  as  the  temporal  power  was  debauched. 
Religious  imperialism  was  stronger  than  political 
imperialism  and  for  a  long  time  succeeded  in  maintain¬ 
ing  by  force  as  truly  catholic  a  unanimity  as,  human 
nature  being  what  it  is,  was  humanly  possible.  One 
dissentient  sect  after  another  arose  and  went  down 
before  this  force,  from  the  Arians,  Lollards,  Hussites, 
to  the  Huguenots.  The _Jews  alone,  in  the  heart  of 
Europe,  underwent  without  resistance  a  religious  war 
waged  against  them  by  the  whole  of  Europe,  and  sur¬ 
vived  it.  They  were  the  everlasting  protestants. 

But  the  conscience  of  Europe  was  not  freed  until  the 
mutual  interplay  and  rivalry  of  religious  and  dynastic 
interests  brought  about  that  military  confrontation 
in  religious  terms  which  we  know  as  the  Wars  of  the 
Reformation.  Those  wars,  quite  as  much  a  conflict 
of  dynasties  for  empire  as  of  doctrines  for  domination, 
and  carried  on  almost  continuously  for  nearly  a  cen¬ 
tury  and  a  half,  finally  destroyed  the  imperialism  of 
religion  in  Europe.  They  left  the  continent  a  desert, 
the  feudal  order  shattered,  the  local  sovereign  an 
autocrat,  and  the  peasantry  almost  destroyed.  But 
particularly  they  left  the  mind  of  Europe  free  from 
the  central  fixation  to  which  religious  imperialism 
had  compelled  it,  and  both  the  misery  and  enterprise 
of  Europe  free  for  intellectual  adventure.  The  de¬ 
struction  of  the  imperialism  of  the  Church  converted 
it  into  the  opportunist  foe  of  the  temporal  power, 
and  its  theorists,  like  the  Jesuit  brothers  Mariana  and 
Suarez,  opposed  the  people  to  the  kings  and  super¬ 
imposed  the  Church  on  both.  Protestantism  itself, 
again,  by  setting  the  authority  of  the  Bible  against 
that  of  the  Pope  and  abolishing  intermediaries  between 


26  ZIONISM  AND  WORLD  POLITICS 


God  and  the  hearts  of  men,  struck  at  all  authority, 
political  as  well  as  ecclesiastical.  The  idea  of  the  natu¬ 
ral  rights  of  man  was  used  to  confront  the  tradition 
of  the  divine  rights  of  kings.  Political  doctrine  took 
imaginative  wings.  The  challenge  to  sovereignty 
was  made  effective  in  England  by  a  formal  trial  and 
genuine  execution  of  a  king  according  to  the  law  of 
the  land  above  which  he  had,  as  its  supposititious  source, 
been  held  to  be.  In  the  rest  of  Europe  this  challenge 
became  a  potential  menace,  working  in  the  background 
of  men’s  thoughts,  and  bursting  now  and  then  into 
the  foreground  in  action. 

But  if  men  found  themselves  in  real  ideas  of  this 
type,  they  sought  also  to  escape  from  the  misery  to 
which  the  ideas  were  a  response  in  a  new  lease  of  super¬ 
naturalism  and  a  new  magic.  The  substitution  of 
the  Bible  for  the  church  as  the  seat  of  authority  in 
religion  aroused  interest,  intellectual  but  by  no  means 
kindly,  in  the  People  of  the  Book  and  all  their  works. 
The  Kabbala  had  almost  immediately  seized  the  wan¬ 
dering  imagination  of  Europe.  Its  mysteries,  letters, 
phrases,  and  calculations,  its  pretensions  to  magical 
powers,  allied  as  they  were  with  hidden  meanings 
universally  attributed  to  the  Bible,  fascinated  the 
imagination  of  Europeans,  from  Pico  della  Mirandola 
to  the  latest  English  Biblitaster  mulling  in  mysteries. 
This,  together  with  the  complete  emotional  and  intel¬ 
lectual  decentralization,  could  not  but  lead  to  anticipa¬ 
tions  of  the  Messiah.  The  time  of  the  restoration  of 
Israel  to  Palestine  and  of  the  second  advent  was  held 
to  be  at  hand.  Kabbalistic  calculations  among  Jews 
put  it  in  1648.  And  Christian  millennianists  put  it  in 
1666. 


THE  JEWISH  POSITION 


27 


Between  1648  and  1666 — the  era  of  Sabbattai' 
Zevi’s  “mission” — came,  however,  one  of  the  very 
darkest  pages  of  the  history  of  the  Jewish  people. 
Their  status  in  Europe  derived  from  two  assumptions, 
both  implicit  in  their  alienation  from  citizenship  in 
339.  The  first  was  that  they  were  members  of  a 
foreign  nation,  living  in  their  own  communities,  under 
their  own  laws,  and  governed  by  their  own  hereditary 
or  elective  rulers.  The  stress  thrown  by  theology 
on  the  absence  of  the  Jews  from  Zion,  the  designation 
of  their  absence  as  a  Galuth  or  dispersion,  has  obscured 
the  truly  national  character  of  the  Jewish  community, 
national  both  in  the  political  and  the  cultural  sense. 
Men  forget  that  absence  from  Palestine  meant  presence 
somewhere  else,  and  it  happens  that  there  has  been 
hardly  a  period  in  the  history  of  the  Jewish  people 
without  the  concentration  of  the  greater  part  of  them 
upon  a  single  continuous  area,  into  a  community 
organized  and  operating  under  Jewish  law.  That  it 
was  not  sovereign,  in  the  sense  of  being  a  war-making, 
peace-making  community;  that  it  was  a  subject- 
nationality,  largely  at  the  mercy  of  its  neighbours; 
that  it  was  hence  a  repressed  community  without 
freedom  for  its  spontaneous  energies,  are  matters  of 
record.  Nevertheless,  it  was  a  political  entity,  self- 
determined  and  with  almost  complete  internal  au¬ 
tonomy,  and  was  until  the  nineteenth  century  dealt 
with  as  such  by  the  masters  of  Europe  and  Asia. 
Such  an  entity  was  the  Exilarchate  of  the  House  of 
David,  which  came  into  being  with  the  Babylonian 
Captivity;  such  was  the  Nagidate  in  Egypt;  such  was 
the  Wa’ad  Arbah  Arazoth  (Council  of  the  Four  Lands) 
or  Congressus  Judaicus  in  the  Polish  Empire.  The 


28  ZIONISM  AND  WORLD  POLITICS 

\ 

latter  dominion,  extending  at  the  time  when  this  Con¬ 
gress  flourished  almost  from  the  Baltic  to  the  Black 
Sea,  was  the  great  area  of  concentration  for  the  Jewish 
people  of  Europe  from  the  thirteenth  century  onward. 
These  Jewish  governments  acted  for  the  Jewish  people 
in  all  matters  affecting  their  relations  with  their  land¬ 
lords,  conquerors,  or  overlords. 

The  Congressus  Judaicus ,  indeed,  was  an  echo  of  the 
Polish  Saym  resting  on  a  foundation  of  congregational 
units  and  achieving  what  was  for  the  time  a  very  high 
degree  of  democracy.  It  was  responsible  to  the  Polish 
kings  both  for  the  domestic  and  the  foreign  affairs 
of  the  Jews,  particularly  for  taxes.  It  was  the  one 
agency  that  stood  between  the  Jewry  of  Poland  and 
the  total  destruction  that  menaced  it  with  the  Chmel- 
nicki  uprising  in  1648.  The  Messianic  afflatus  of  the 
period  was  largely  a  function  of  this  uprising.  An  act 
of  revolt  and  resentment  on  the  part  of  the  Ukrainian 
khlops  or  peasantry  against  the  unbearable  exactions 
of  their  Polish  overlords,  it  struck  hardest  at  the  Jews. 
The  Jews  had  been  agents  of  these  overlords — taxfarmers, 
factors,  and  such — and  they  were  the  first  to  pay.  Chmel- 
nicki  organized  a  Jew-hunt  that  ranged  from  Podolia 
and  Volhynia  to  Lithuania  and  White  Russia.  He 
was  followed  by  the  Great  Russians,  who  had  declared 
war  upon  the  Poles.  The  Russians  were  followed  by 
the  plague.  In  the  course  of  little  more  than  a  decade 
the  Jewish  people  had  lost  675,000  of  their  number, 
their  homes  were  devastated,  their  property  destroyed. 
Thousands  fled  to  western  Europe,  other  thousands 
sought  safety  in  baptism.  Without  the  help  of  the 
Jewry  of  western  Europe,  which  came  swiftly  and  gene¬ 
rously,  the  Congressus  Judaicus  of  Poland  could  never 


THE  JEWISH  POSITION 


29 


have  reconstituted  the  economy  of  their  nation.  But 
the  great  comfort  of  their  misery  was  the  word  out  of 
the  East  of  the  imminence  of  the  Messiah  and  the 
return  to  the  Promised  Land.  They  believed — how, 
so  miserable,  could  they  help  believing? — and  their 
belief  sustained  them. 

Religious  doctrine  had  its  own  part  in  their  misery. 
It  was  the  second  and  other  ground  of  their  disability, 
a  more  terrible  ground,  for  the  position  of  the  Jew  in 
the  European  religious  system,  no  matter  what  the 
sect,  was  regarded  as  determined  by  divine  revelation 
and  was  a  commonplace  of  faith  that  was  taught  to 
the  poorest  serf.  The  Jew  was  held  to  be  eternally 
excommunicate  from  the  gates  of  the  common  salvation, 
rejector  of  it,  and  cursed  for  the  rejection.  His 
existence,  hence,  could  be  maintained  only  on  sufferance. 
Being  beyond  communion,  he  was  incommunicado, 
without  rights,  civil  or  personal.  The  Church  might 
order  his  destruction,  over-ruling  even  the  will  of  the 
king,  whose  property,  according  to  the  mediaeval 
custom,  the  Jew  was  automatically  held  to  be.  The 
Church  authorities  in  Poland  were  indefatigable  in  their 
efforts  against  the  Jews  and  their  faith.  They  drove 
them  from  the  public  service,  assaulted  the  general 
principles  of  their  charter,  demanded  and  compelled 
sumptuary  laws  against  them,  both  of  dress  and  domi¬ 
cile,  spread  against  them  blood  libels  and  levied  on  them 
illegal  and  extortionate  taxes.  The  Reformation  gave 
the  Church  in  Poland,  as  elsewhere,  an  added  animus. 
Jewish  influence  was  credited  with  causing  the  heresy, 
and  any  punishment  short  of  death  was  not  too  great. 
“The  Church,”  declared  the  Ecclesiastical  Synod  of 
1542,  “tolerates  the  Jews  for  the  sole  purpose  of  re- 


30  ZIONISM  AND  WORLD  POLITICS 


minding  us  of  the  torments  of  the  Saviour.”  Between 
1648  and  1666  the  Catholicism  of  Poland  finished  off 
the  uncompleted  depredations  of  Chmelnicki  and  his 
Haidamacks  and  of  the  Muscovite  and  his  troops. 
The  misery  of  the  Polish  Jews  reached  a  depth  so  ulti¬ 
mate  that  their  minds  could  not  conceive  of  a  salvation 
less  so.  The  new  Messiah  was  believed  in  with  a 
fervour  measurable  only  by  the  tragedy  from  which 
he  was  to  save  his  people.  “The  Jews  of  Ukrainia,” 
writes  the  Christian,  Galatovski,  who  flourished  at  the 
period,  “  abandoned  their  all  in  readiness  to  be  carried 
on  a  cloud  to  Jerusalem.” 

In  sum,  then,  between  1648  and  1666  the  political, 
intellectual,  and  emotional  condition  of  the  whole 
European  world  was  such  that  the  achievement  of 
the  restoration  of  the  chosen  people  to  their  promised 
land  was  generally  accepted  as  the  imminent  precursor 
to  a  millennial  change.  The  anticipation  moved  all 
classes  of  society  equally,  from  the  miserable  and 
expropriated  peasantry  and  Jewry,  seeking  in  magic 
salvation  from  fact,  to  the  most  intellectual  and  scien¬ 
tific  protagonists  of  that  new  adjustment  of  cosmic  out¬ 
look  which  we  call  science.  It  is  used  by  Mennaseh 
ben  Israel  in  his  successful  effort  to  persuade  Cromwell 
to  remove  the  ban  against  the  settlement  of  Jews  in 
England.  “The  opinion,”  he  writes,  “of  many  Chris¬ 
tians  and  mine  do  concur  therein  that  we  both  believe 
that  the  restoring  time  of  our  Nation  into  their  native 
country  is  very  near  at  hand.”  It  is  the  subject  of 
exchange  between  the  Gentile  scholar  Oldenburg  and 
the  Jewish  philosopher  Spinoza.  “All  the  world  here,” 
Oldenburg  writes  to  Spinoza,  “is  talking  of  a  rumour 
of  the  return  of  the  Israelites  ...  to  their  own 


THE  JEWISH  POSITION 


31 


country.  .  .  .  Should  the  news  be  confirmed,  it 

may  bring  about  a  revolution  in  all  things.”  And 
Spinoza,  many  years  later,  when  the  Sabbattian  craze 
was  already  subsident,  arguing  in  the  Theologico- 
Political  Tractate  for  the  equality  of  all  peoples  before 
God,  insists  that  whatever  election  the  Jews  were 
beneficiaries  of  was  national  and  social,  that  it  “had 
no  regard  to  aught  but  dominion  and  physical  advan¬ 
tages,  for  by  such  alone  could  one  nation  be  distin¬ 
guished  from  another.”  “Nay,  I  would  go  so  far 
as  to  believe  that  if  the  foundations  of  their  religion 
have  not  emasculated  their  minds  they  may  even, 
if  the  occasion  offers,  so  changeable  are  human  affairs, 
raise  up  their  empire  afresh  and  that  God  may  a  second 
time  elect  them.” 

The  significant  thing  about  the  whole  Sabbattian 
adventure  and  the  development  that  led  up  to  it  is 
the  fact  that  nowhere  in  Europe  was  there  any  question 
that  the  Jews  are  a  nation,  that  Palestine  is  “their 
own  country,”  that  the  two  belong  together.  Nor  has 
there  been  any  question  in  the  European  mind  since. 


CHAPTER  IV 


EFFECTS  OF  THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  NATURAL  RIGHTS 

UPON  THE  JEWISH  POSITION 

FOR  Europe  the  Messianic  expectancy  was  only  a 
passing  mood.  Science,  begun  as  an  adventure,  be¬ 
came  an  institution;  its  temper  of  interrogation  and 
challenge  forced  everything  under  analytical  scrutiny, 
from  the  least-regarded  spontaneities  of  nature  to 
the  most  sacrosanct  taboos  of  man.  The  eighteenth 
century  incorporated  into  its  common  sense  what  had 
been  daring  imagination  in  the  seventeenth,  and  its 
calm  and  satirical  eye  discerned  underneath  all  the 
differences  of  race,  faith,  colour,  wealth,  power,  station, 
nurture,  and  capacity,  a  “natural  man”  the  equal 
and  the  peer  of  his  fellows.  Inequalities,  it  declared, 
were  the  artificial  effects  of  the  institutions  of  civiliza¬ 
tion;  the  effects  of  the  State  and  the  Church,  which, 
again,  were  the  perversions  of  nature  by  the  few  in  their 
immemorial  exploitation  of  the  many.  One  God,  one 
law,  one  human  nature  are  at  the  foundation  of  all 
life.  Each  man  is  the  like  of  every  other  man;  each  is 
equally  and  inalienably  entitled  with  all  others  to 
“life,  liberty,  and  the  pursuit  of  happiness”;  each  has 
contracted  the  insurance  of  his  title  by  consenting 
to  the  creation  of  government;  each  has  been  then 
defrauded  by  the  government  he  has  created  of  just 
that  natural  right  which  he  had  designed  it  to  protect. 

32 


NATURAL  RIGHTS 


33 


Strip  away  government,  the  Church,  the  economic 
order,  and  you  abolish  crime  and  poverty  and  the 
whole  hierarchy  of  social  inequalities.  All  these  are 
man-made.  They  do  not  exist  in  nature,  and  they 
should  not  be  tolerated  by  enlightened  men.  By 
nature  men  are  citizens  of  the  world,  not  of  the  state; 
followers  of  natural  religion,  not  of  this  or  that  fabrica¬ 
tion  of  priests;  like  lovers  of  one  another,  not  haters 
seduced  thereto  by  artificial  diversities.  By  nature, 
men  are  equal  and  alike,  they  differ  only  by  nurture. 

This  teaching,  common  to  England  and  to  France, 
particularly  strong  in  France,  was  not,  of  course,  the 
pure  deduction  of  science.  It  was  quite  as  much,  and 
perhaps  more,  resentment  against  the  concentrated 
absolutism  which  had  become  characteristic  of  the 
state  system  of  Europe  in  the  eighteenth  century.  In 
England  alone  had  this  failed  to  fix  itself  firmly,  and 
the  period  from  the  restoration  of  the  Stuarts  to  their 
final  expulsion  and  the  formulation  of  the  Bill  of 
Rights  was  a  period  of  actual  conflict  between  a  dynas¬ 
tic  absolutism  grounding  itself  on  the  traditional 
divine  rights  of  kings,  and  a  democratic  nationalism 
grounding  itself  on  the  scientific  natural  rights  of 
man,  with  a  final  practical  victory  for  natural  rights. 
On  the  continent,  the  victory  was  entirely  dynastic. 
States  were  conceived  as  estates — “ VEtat  c’est  moi ” 
was  no  paradox  of  a  paranoiac  king — and  populations 
and  territories  changed  hands  in  marriage  and  warfare 
conducted  as  the  purely  private  and  self-sufficient 
enterprises  of  royal  privilege.  Everything  was  prop¬ 
erty,  including  opinion.  Thus,  religious  imperialism 
had  not  given  way  to  tolerance.  It  merely  had  been 
replaced  by  religious  nationalism.  Citizenship  re- 


34  ZIONISM  AND  WORLD  POLITICS 


mained  an  appurtenance  of  conformity  to  certain 
standard  dogmas  and  beliefs.  This,  as  Locke’s  essays 
on  toleration  attest,  was  as  true  in  England  as  on  the 
continent;  and  the  winning  of  toleration  was  itself 
a  political  event  compelled  mostly  by  the  political 
strength  of  the  disabled  religious  minorities.  Tolera¬ 
tion  is  in  substance  religious  democracy.  Whatever 
may  be  the  situation  de  jure ,  it  is  impossible  without  at 
least  a  de  facto  distinction  between  Church  and  State, 
a  distinction  that  becomes  possible  only  when  sects 
are  so  numerous  and  varied  and  powerful  that  the  al¬ 
ternative  to  toleration  is  civil  war.  Over  the  major 
part  of  the  continent  of  Europe  religious  nationalism 
prevailed  to  within  the  third  year  of  the  Great  War, 
and  citizenship  and  church  membership  were  compli¬ 
cative  and  coincident.  The  greater  the  strength  of  this 
artificial  coimplication,  the  more  centralized  and  abso¬ 
lute  the  government  which  sustains  it;  the  more  com¬ 
plete,  the  more  logical  and  systematic  the  theoretical 
repudiation  which  according  to  time,  place,  and  circum¬ 
stances  it  undergoes.  Such  was  the  case  in  France.  The 
theorizing  of  the  Encyclopaedists,  from  Diderot  and 
Voltaire  to  Montesquieu  and  Rousseau,  carried  to  their 
logical  limit  the  practical  assumptions  of  Locke  and  the 
other  authors  of  the  English  Bill  of  Rights.  They  made 
good  in  idea  the  shortcomings  of  the  social  facts. 

That  their  logic  should  ultimately  be  extended  to 
the  Jews  was  inevitable.  In  England  this  extension 
had  been  proceeding  in  the  normally  piecemeal  and 
muddling  British  way.  Although  it  was  not  absolutely 
completed  until  1890,  it  was  begun  practically  with 
their  readmission  to  England  in  Cromwell’s  day,  and 
progressed  in  the  usual  English  parliamentary  fashion 


NATURAL  RIGHTS 


35 


from  then  on.  In  France,  the  extension  was  shorter, 
sharper,  more  purely  theoretical.  First  made  in  formal 
terms  by  Montesquieu,  it  received  practical  applica¬ 
tion  and  defence  at  the  hands  of  Mirabeau  and  the 
Abbe  Gregoire.  During  the  Revolution  the  two  latter 
fought  for  it  in  the  National  Assembly  against  the 
clericals,  and  it  was  finally  carried  (1791)  as  an  inevita¬ 
ble  corollary  of  the  Constitution.  The  effect  was  for¬ 
mally  to  convert  the  Jews  from  a  nationality  into  a 
sect:  “Judaism,”  wrote  Deputy  Schwendt  to  his  con¬ 
stituents  in  Alsace,  “is  nothing  more  than  the  name  of 
a  distinct  religion.”  The  Jews  were  enfranchised, 
not  as  they  had  been  disfranchised,  in  their  collectivity, 
as  a  corporate  entity,  a  nationality;  but  individually, 
Jew  by  Jew,  each  as  a  “natural  man,”  the  equal  of 
all  other  “natural  men,”  without  heredity,  history, 
language,  culture,  or  social  memory,  a  mere  “now” 
in  the  temporal  extent  of  the  generations.  The  strip¬ 
ping  of  his  selfhood  which  this  requires  from  any  man 
was  of  course  an  impossible  price  to  pay  for  enfran¬ 
chisement.  It  was  suicide,  and  a  nationality  can  only 
die  or  be  killed,  but  has  so  far  shown  no  ability  to 
commit  suicide.  Nevertheless,  the  Jews  of  western 
Europe  fancied  that  they  could  pay  the  price  and  sur¬ 
vive  as  Jews.  They  accepted  the  responsibility  of  the 
affirmative  to  Napoleon’s  questions  of  1806.  Without 
this  affirmative  he  would  have  withdrawn  from  them 
the  civil  freedom  which  the  Revolution  had  won  for 
them.  Their  yielding  it  initiated,  so  far  as  social 
history  is  concerned,  the  mental  attitude  and  develop¬ 
ment  of  what  is  called  the  Reform  movement  in 
Judaism. 

In  this  movement  there  is  nothing  primarily  religious. 


36  ZIONISM  AND  WORLD  POLITICS 


It  began  with  no  great  inspiration,  no  great  vision 
and  gospel  of  inner  regeneration,  which  are  the  traits 
of  genuinely  religious  reforms.  Its  beginnings  rest 
in  a  political  and  social  position,  and  to  this  day  it 
has  not  advanced  from  this  position.  It  stands  still  on 
the  intellectual  platform  of  the  eighteenth  century 
and  the  French  Revolution,  on  the  doctrine  of  natural 
rights  and  natural  law  and  the  rule  of  abstract  reason. 
It  strips  from  the  Jew  all  that  makes  of  him  a  concrete 
human  being,  all  his  reality.  It  denies  in  its  very  form 
the  existence  of  the  social  personality  called  the  Jewish 
people.  It  substitutes  for  the  vision  of  the  Messiah, 
which  sustained  the  Jews  in  the  Middle  Ages,  the  con¬ 
ception  of  “the  mission  of  Israel,”  to  justify  such 
minimal  Jewish  traits  as  the  organizers  of  Reform 
could  not  bring  themselves  to  abandon.  It  restates, 
with  an  inverted  valuation,  the  mediaeval  conception 
of  the  status  and  function  of  the  Jewish  people.  Where, 
for  example,  Christianism  declares  that  the  Jews  had 
been  condemned  by  God  to  dispersion  because  of  their 
rejection  of  the  Saviour,  the  Reform  Jews  say,  “The 
dispersion  is  a  fact,  but  is  not  due  to  the  curse  of  God, 
but  to  the  realization  of  the  divine  purpose  to  bless 
the  world.”  Where  Christianism  says,  “Jews  are 
dispersed  and  will  continue  so  as  a  living  witness  to 
the  prophecies  of  the  Bible  which  proclaims  their 
dispersion,”  the  Reformers  assert  that  this  dispersion 
is  predestined  so  that  the  Jewish  sectaries  who  have 
been  chosen  by  the  Lord  may  be  everlasting  witnesses 
to  the  truth  of  the  Bible  and  its  prophecies.  And 
where  Christianism  declares  that  this  dispersion  will 
last  until  the  second  coming  of  Christ,  until  the  appear¬ 
ance  of  Christ  as  the  Paraclete,  the  Reform  sect  de- 


NATURAL  RIGHTS 


37 


dares  that  this  dispersion  is  to  continue  until  all  men 
shall  acknowledge  the  “Jewish  God.”  In  this  way 
the  movement  has  attempted  automatically,  under 
the  rule  that  ideals  are  compensatory  for  facts,  to 
convert  into  a  merit  what  to  Christian  theology  is 
the  shame  of  the  Jewish  people.  It  did  that,  I  think, 
on  the  whole,  if  I  read  the  literature  aright,  with 
something  like  a  broken  heart.  It  wanted  for  the 
Jewish  people  the  same  values  that  other  peoples  in  the 
world  were  getting.  There  is  no  question  about  the 
amiability  of  the  intentions  of  Reform,  and  there  is  no 
question  about  the  magnificent  distinction  of  one  phase 
of  Reform  achievement,  not  noticed  by  Reformers. 
This  is  the  liberation  of  woman  in  the  Jewish  com¬ 
munity  and  if  nothing  else  justifies  it,  this  does.  But 
once  it  has  liberated  the  Jewish  woman,  it  has  done 
its  whole  work.  The  intention  of  Reform  was  excellent 
but  the  method  it  used,  being  contrary  to  the  trend 
of  social,  history,  failed  to  achieve  the  results  in¬ 
tended.  ... 

Other  states  slowly  imitated  France.  Western 
Europe  completed  the  enfranchisement  of  the  Jews, 
severally,  only  toward  the  end  of  the  nineteenth 
century.  And  this  enfranchisement,  of  course,  has 
the  defects  of  its  virtues,  for  Western  Jewry  took, 
with  respect  to  the  enfranchisement  it  sought,  a 
position  which  was  an  acknowledgment  that  Jewish 
qualities,  Jewish  forms  of  life  and  thought  were  in 
Jews  unworthy;  that  Jewish  differences  from  their 
neighbours  were,  on  the  whole,  inferiorities,  and  that 
Jews  must  become — except  that  they  call  their  priests 
“rabbis”  and  worship  in  “temples”  and  not  in  churches 
— the  same  as  the  Gentiles.  The  Reform  movement, 


38  ZIONISM  AND  WORLD  POLITICS 


therefore,  has  been  what  is  called  an  assimilationist 
movement.  That  is,  it  has  wanted  for  Jews  not  an 
equal  but  a  similar  happiness  to  that  of  all  other  peoples. 
And  what  it  has  accomplished  in  order  to  get  this 
life  and  happiness  has  been  to  rob  the  enfranchised 
Jew  of  the  self-respect  of  his  birthright  as  Jew;  has 
been  to  compel  nim  to  act  on  the  assumption  that  the 
whole  substance  of  the  Jewish  background  and  tradi¬ 
tion,  the  organization  of  Jewish  life  with  its  implications, 
is  a  worthless  thing,  a  thing  to  be  abandoned. 

This  whole  process  rests  on  the  illusion  that  equality 
is  similarity.  It  is  concomitant  with  the  uncritical 
doctrine  of  natural  right  and  natural  law;  with  the 
resentment  which  this  doctrine  expressed  against  the 
artificial  inequalities  of  the  dynastic  and  ecclesiastical 
systems  that  robbed  men  of  their  due  of  freedom  and 
happiness.  The  doctrine  is  compensatory;  a  protest, 
not  a  description.  But  in  animating  and  guiding  the 
French  Revolution  it  served  a  high  purpose.  It 
enfranchised  the  peoples  of  Europe,  even  in  the  course 
of  the  Napoleonic  attempt  to  enslave  them.  It 
awakened  their  dormant  corporate  consciousness.  It 
led  them  to  realize  their  nationality  and  to  struggle 
for  its  freedom.  To  say  this  is  to  say  that  people 
“were  becoming  conscious,  in  trying  to  respond  to  the 
call  of  the  Revolution,  of  what  nature  and  habit  and 
hope  they  and  their  neighbours  were,  and  of  how  these 
were  expressed  in  language  and  tradition,  in  memory 
and  custom,  in  all  that  makes  a  community’s  cycle 
of  life.  The  revolutionary  call  to  Equality  meant, 
for  the  daily  life,  the  abolition  of  all  caste  and  property 
distinctions.  .  .  .  The  Revolution’s  call  to  Fra¬ 

ternity  meant  for  the  daily  life  comradeship  on  an 


NATURAL  RIGHTS 


39 


equal  basis  with  any  one  with  whom  communication 
could  be  effectively  held — in  truth,  with  the  neighbour 
near  at  hand,  who  speaks  the  same  language  and  has 
the  same  background,  who,  by  virtue  of  this  sameness, 
understands.  The  Revolution’s  call  to  Liberty  meant, 
first  and  foremost,  the  overthrow  of  the  traditional 
oppressor  at  home  and  the  achievement  there  of  self- 
government,  the  replacing  of  dynasty  by  commonwealth. 

“Had  the  new  French  nation  continued  to  treat 
the  peoples  its  armies  set  free  as  peers,  as  fellow- 
citizens,  not  as  subjects;  had  Napoleon  not  once  more 
restored  piratical  imperialism  to  the  place  from  which 
the  ideas  of  the  Revolution  had  driven  it,  the  ruling 
caste  of  Europe  could  never  have  succeeded  in  duping 
their  subjects  into  believing  in  the  identity  of  their 
respective  interests  and  the  community  of  their  cause. 
Even  so,  their  success  depended  on  a  concession  to  the 
principle  that  sovereignty  rests  in  the  people.  For  the 
call  to  resist  Napoleon  had  to  be  made  through  an 
appeal  to  self-appreciation,  through  a  propaganda, 
sometimes  inspired,  sometimes  spontaneous,  exhorting 
the  various  peoples  of  Europe  to  consider  the  ex¬ 
cellence  and  dignity  of  their  ancestries,  their  cults, 
their  traditions,  their  histories,  their  ways  of  living, 
their  arts,  and  particularly  their  languages.  The  most 
conspicuous  continental  instance  of  such  a  propaganda 
is  the  series  of  ‘Addresses  to  the  German  People,’  by 
the  philosopher  Fichte.” 

But  there  were  many  others.  It  is  part  of  the  irony 
of  the  Jewish  position  that  those  Jews  who  were  in 
contact  with  the  great  movements  of  the  day,  scions 
of  the  one  people  that  had  from  antiquity  on  been 
champions  of  nationality  against  all  imperialism  and 


40  ZIONISM  AND  WORLD  POLITICS 


tyranny,  should  seek  themselves  to  repress  and  destroy 
their  own  at  a  time  when  nationality  was  awakening 
to  renewed  life  among  the  peoples  of  the  whole  con¬ 
tinent  of  Europe — in  Greece  and  among  the  other 
victims  of  Turkish  domination;  in  Germany;  in  Poland; 
in  Ireland.  That  the  restoration  of  Palestine  to  the 
Jewish  people  and  the  Jewish  people  to  Palestine 
had  even  in  this  period  touched  the  interests  and  hopes 
of  Jews  and  Gentiles  both,  there  is  much  in  the  record 
to  show.  An  anonymous  letter  to  the  Jews  of  France 
by  “one  of  them,”  proposed  in  1798  the  creation  by 
the  Jews  of  the  world  of  a  Jewish  council  which  should 
treat  with  the  French  government  for  the  restoration 
of  Palestine  to  its  traditional  people.  “The  country 
we  propose  to  occupy,”  he  wrote,  “shall  include  (sub¬ 
ject  to  such  arrangements  as  shall  be  agreeable  to 
France)  Lower  Egypt,  with  the  addition  of  a  district, 
which  shall  have  for  its  limits  a  line  running  from 
Acre  to  the  Dead  Sea,  and  from  the  south  point  of 
that  lake  to  the  Red  Sea.”1  He  pointed  out  the 
economic  advantages  of  the  position,  situated  at  the 
juncture  of  three  continents,  and  concluded:  “Oh,  my 
brethren!  What  sacrifices  ought  we  not  to  make  to 
attain  this  object!  We  shall  return  to  our  country,  we 
shall  live  under  our  own  laws,  we  shall  behold  those 
sacred  places  which  our  ancestors  rendered  illustrious 
with  their  courage  and  their  virtues.  I  already  see 
you  all  animated  with  a  holy  zeal.  Israelites!  The 
term  of  your  misfortunes  is  at  hand.  The  opportunity 
is  favourable.  Take  care  that  you  do  not  allow  it  to 
escape.”  Just  how  the  opportunity  was  favourable 
is  not  known,  but  it  is  significant  that  the  Moniteur 


^ited  by  A.  M.  Hyamson,  in  “Palestine,”  p.  165. 


NATURAL  RIGHTS 


41 


Universelie  of  1799,  23  Germinal,  records  a  proclamation 
ordered  in  Constantinople  by  Napoleon,  inviting  the 
Jews  of  Asia  and  Africa  to  enrol  under  his  banners 
for  the  purpose  of  reestablishing  ancient  Jerusalem. 
The  failure  of  both  the  Western  and  Eastern  Jewries 
to  respond  to  these  calls  had  probably  no  slight  con¬ 
nection  with  the  Napoleonic  impatience  and  severity 
in  1806,  when  the  Emperor  practically  compelled 
by  his  questions  the  Jews  of  his  domains  either  to  re¬ 
pudiate  their  nationality  or  to  put  themselves  in  a 
position  to  affirm  it  by  force.  The  Council  of  Notables 
or  Sanhedrin  which  he  called  repudiated  it:  the  bulk 
of  them  came  not  from  the  free  heart  of  France  but 
from  clericalist  and  priest-ridden  Alsace.  The  writer 
of  the  letter  of  1798  came  from  a  freer-hearted  and 
clearer- visioned  time  in  the  history  of  France. 

Significantly,  the  one  great  parallel  of  this  period 
issues  a  generation  later  from  the  world’s  other  great 
seat  of  freedom  and  republicanism,  where  the  con¬ 
ception  of  “natural  rights”  dominated — the  United 
States  of  America.  It  is  there  overlaid  a  little  with 
elements  of  mountebankery  and  melodrama,  and 
takes  some  time  to  come  clear.  But  clear  it  does  come 
finally,  and  its  terms  are  remarkably  similar  to  those 
of  the  letter  of  1798.  Its  terms  are  promulgated  by 
Mordecai  Manuel  Noah.  Its  first  shape  in  his  mind 
was  that  of  a  Messianic  adventure  tempered  by  the 
business  of  real  estate  speculation.  Sensitive  to  the 
sufferings  and  disabilities  of  his  people,  he  conceived 
the  notion  of  founding  for  them  on  Grand  Island,  not 
far  from  Buffalo,  New  York,  a  city  of  refuge,  which  he 
designed  to  call  Ararat,  and  to  establish  himself  as  Chief 
Judge  of  Israel.  He  persuaded  a  Gentile  friend  to 


42  ZIONISM  AND  WORLD  POLITICS 


invest  in  the  land,  and  in  September,  1825,  proceeded 
amid  much  comic  circumstance  and  public  comment 
to  lay  the  corner-stone  of  his  city  in  an  Episcopal 
church  in  the  village  of  Buffalo.  On  the  occasion 
he  issued  a  proclamation,  appointing  commissioners, 
levying  taxes,  ordering  a  census  and  so  on,  and  re¬ 
viving  and  reestablishing  the  ancient  “Government 
of  the  Jewish  Nation,  under  the  auspices  and  pro¬ 
tection  of  the  constitution  and  laws  of  the  United 
States  of  America.”1  The  enterprise  was,  of  course, 
damned  from  the  outset  by  its  charlatanic  character. 
At  its  core,  nevertheless,  were  good  sense  and  sound 
statesmanship.  The  idea  persisted  in  Noah’s  mind, 
but  it  turned  from  a  city  of  refuge  on  the  North  Ameri¬ 
can  continent  to  a  complete  restoration  in  Zion.  To 
this  he  reverted  repeatedly,  always  with  the  notion 
that  the  United  States  might  act  as  the  liberator. 
“The  United  States,”  he  wrote  in  1844,  “the  only 
country  which  has  given  civil  and  religious  rights  to 
the  Jews  equal  with  all  other  sects;  the  only  country 
which  has  not  persecuted  them  has  been  selected 
and  pointedly  distinguished  in  prophecy  as  the  nation 
which,  at  a  proper  time,  shall  present  to  the  Lord  His 
chosen  and  downtrodden  people,  and  pave  the  way 
for  the  restoration  to  Zion.”  This  could  be  done  simply 
by  the  guarantee  of  protection  in  the  purchase  and 
holding  of  land  in  Palestine.  The  idea  met  with  the 
approval  of  John  Adams,  President  of  the  United 
States,  1797-1801.  “I  really  wish,”  he  wrote  Noah, 
“the  Jews  again  in  Judaea,  an  independent  nation, 
for,  as  I  believe,  the  most  enlightened  men  of  it  have 
participated  in  the  amelioration  of  the  philosophy 


1Cf.  “Mordecai  M.  Noah,”  by  A.  B.  Makover. 


NATURAL  RIGHTS 


43 


of  the  age;  once  restored  to  an  independent  govern¬ 
ment,  and  no  longer  persecuted,  they  would  wear 
away  some  of  their  asperities. 

“I  wish  your  nation  may  be  admitted  to  all  the  privi¬ 
leges  of  citizens  in  every  part  of  the  world.  This 
country  (America)  has  done  much:  I  wish  it  may  do 
more,  and  annul  every  narrow  idea  in  religion,  govern¬ 
ment,  and  commerce.” 


CHAPTER  V 


THE  NATIONALIST  TRANSVALUATION  OF  “NATURAL 
RIGHTS”  AND  THE  RETURN  OF  JEWISH  NATIONALISM 

THE  first  families  of  Europe  and  their  stewards, 
usually  called  prime  ministers  and  secretaries  of  state, 
who  sought  to  reapportion  this  continental  domain 
of  theirs  according  to  their  vested  rights  as  those  had 
been  understood  prior  to  the  French  Revolution, 
counted  without  the  Revolution.  The  Congress  of 
Vienna  lasted,  with  interruptions,  some  five  years. 
Its  final  act  was  not  signed  until  May,  1820,  and  by  that 
time  every  position  and  attitude  it  had  taken  in  the 
adjustments  of  the  family  squabbles  and  dower  dis¬ 
putes  of  kings  had  been  challenged  by  the  rising  dis¬ 
content  of  peoples.  This  turned  all  royal  benevolence 
into  defensive  tyranny,  as  in  the  instance  of  the  noto¬ 
rious  Holy  Alliance,  and  royalty  has  remained  on  the 
defensive  ever  since.  The  Revolutionary  gospel  of 
liberty,  equality,  and  fraternity  had  awakened  peoples 
— at  least  to  liberty.  Even  in  the  Napoleonic  tyranny 
there  had  been  an  element  of  overturn  and  equalization. 
Napoleon  himself  was  a  symbol  of  what  opportunity 
freedom  might  create  for  a  man,  and  his  Empire  a 
dominion  of  careers  open  to  and  won  by  talents.  A 
complete  reversion  to  the  old  feudal  caste  system 
of  Europe  was  impossible.  The  mind  and  mood  of 
Europe  had  turned  from  it.  But  equally  impossible 

44 


RETURN  OF  JEWISH  NATIONALISM  45 


was  the  attainment  of  that  abstract  equality  and 
fraternity  of  the  “natural  man,”  the  “human  being” 
that  had  been  the  inspiring  vision  of  the  Revolution. 
Both  the  Revolution  itself  and  the  urgent  need  of 
dynasts,  appealing  at  last  to  their  subjects  to  save  their 
thrones,  gave  it  an  immediate  concrete  and  specific 
application  in  that  neighbourliness  of  common  speech, 
common  customs,  traditions  and  memories  which  are 
the  very  heart  of  nationality. 

These  supplied  to  the  abstractions  of  the  Revolution 
both  body  and  force.  These  are  the  explosive  elements 
in  democracy,  and  it  is  these  primarily  that  throughout 
the  nineteenth  century  made  of  the  democratic  aspira¬ 
tion  an  efficacious  dynamic  in  the  lives  of  men.  The 
nineteenth  century  has  been  called  the  century  of 
nationality  and,  indeed,  it  was;  but  it  was  no  less  the 
century  of  democracy,  and  the  two  cannot  be  separated. 
One  after  another  the  European  and  Christian  subjects 
of  the  Turk,  the  Magyar  and  the  Slavonic  and  the 
Italian  subjects  of  the  Germans,  the  Polish  subjects 
of  the  Russians,  the  Irish  subjects  of  the  English,  rose 
against  their  masters,  some  to  failure  only  and  some 
to  freedom.  One  after  another  peoples  arose  against 
governments  in  France,  in  Germany,  in  Austria,  in 
England,  in  Spain,  in  Portugal.  In  all  these  uprisings, 
they  won,  in  spite  of  setbacks,  to  constantly  freer 
position — sometimes  by  force,  as  in  France,  sometimes 
by  somewhat  more  legislative  action  as  in  England; 
but  they  won.  The  winning  marks  the  rising  wave 
of  nationality  in  Europe,  its  first  phase  culminating  in 
1830  with  the  revolutions  in  France  and  Poland,  the 
liberation  of  Greece,  the  integration  of  Switzerland; 
its  second  phase  in  1848,  with  uprisings  all  over  Europe, 


46  ZIONISM  AND  WORLD  POLITICS 


and  its  third  phase  in  1878  with  the  Council  of  Vienna. 
Its  fourth  phase  culminated  in  the  Great  War.  This 
very  probably  marks  the  end  of  the  era  of  nationality 
as  a  programme  and  an  ideal.  The  terms  of  peace 
have  converted  it,  in  words  at  least,  from  a  motive 
into  a  condition,  have  established  it  as  an  acknowledged 
fact  under  the  protection  of  international  law,  and  have 
thus  permitted  the  emergence  into  the  foreground 
of  history  of  the  second  great  social  motive  which 
was  a  spring  of  action  in  the  nineteenth  century — 
the  motive  of  economic  justice.  That  has  already 
sprung  clear  in  Russia  and  has  defined  itself  sharply 
in  the  mass  movements  of  England  and  Germany  and 
Italy  and  France.  We  shall  see  how  it  challenges  all  gov¬ 
ernment  anew  and  ineluctably  as  nationality  challenged 
government  after  1815.  The  future  belongs  to  it. 

The  past,  however,  has  been  governed  by  the  aspira¬ 
tions  of  nationality.  The  utterance  and  philosophy 
of  these  reached  their  height  in  the  second  quarter  of 
the  nineteenth  century,  and  its  noblest  and  truest 
voice  was  Giuseppe  Mazzini.  His  outlook  is  simple, 
a  complement  rather  than  a  contradiction  of  the  outlook 
of  the  eighteenth-century  thinkers  whose  ideas  gave 
birth  to  the  French  Revolution.  He  criticizes  them, 
Voltaire  and  Montesquieu  and  Rousseau  particularly, 
for  their  political  and  historical  formalism.  “It  is 
not  by  the  force  of  conventions  or  of  aught  else”  he 
writes,1  “but  by  a  necessity  of  our  nature  that  societies 
are  founded  and  grow.”  Hence  nationality  and  the 
aspirations  of  nationality.  Hence  its  implication  in 
democracy  and  democracy’s  implication  in  it.  Hence 
the  need  for  collective  action.  “Nations  are  initiated 


Thoughts  on  the  French  Revolution  of  1789.” 


RETURN  OF  JEWISH  NATIONALISM  47 


into  the  worship  of  liberty  by  the  sufferings  of  servi¬ 
tude.”  Individuals  cannot  by  themselves  win  liberty, 
they  can  only  die  for  it:  “ individual  faith  makes 
martyrs;  social  faith  gains  victories  .  .  .  The  char¬ 

ter  of  each  Nation’s  liberty  is  a  clause  in  the  charter 
of  Humanity.”  These  excerpts  are  from  “Faith  and 
the  Future,”  written  in  French  at  Bienne  in  1835,  as  a 
reply  to  Louis  Philippe’s  treachery  against  democracy. 
The  essay  states  the  whole  Mazzinian  philosophy  of 
democratic  nationalism.  What  he  thought  of  the 
Jewish  position,  its  hopelessness  and  degradation, 
may  be  gathered  from  the  reference  to  them — I  have 
italicized  it — in  the  fifth  of  the  lectures  to  the  Italian 
workers  on  the  Duties  of  Man — The  Duty  to  Country.1 
“Without  Country,”  he  declares,  “you  have  neither 
name,  token,  voice,  nor  rights,  no  admission  as  brothers 
into  the  fellowship  of  the  Peoples.  You  are  the 
bastards  of  Humanity.  Soldiers  without  a  banner, 
Israelites  among  the  nations ,  you  will  find  neither  faith 
nor  protection;  none  will  be  sureties  for  you.  Do  not 
beguile  yourselves  with  the  hope  of  emancipation  from 
unjust  social  conditions  if  you  do  not  first  conquer 
a  Country  for  yourselves;  where  there  is  no  Country 
there  is  no  common  agreement  to  which  you  can  appeal; 
the  egoism  of  self-interest  rules  alone,  and  he  who  has 
the  upper  hand  keeps  it,  since  there  is  no  common 
safeguard  for  the  interests  of  all.  Do  not  be  led  away 
by  the  idea  of  improving  your  material  conditions 
without  first  solving  the  National  question.  You 
cannot  do  it.  .  .  All  his  other  writings  are 

either  anticipations  or  echoes  of  this  passionate  na¬ 
tionalist  philosophy.  Its  conception  of  society  is  in- 


1  Everyman’s  Edition,  pp.  53-54. 


48  ZIONISM  AND  WORLD  POLITICS 


dependent  of  its  metaphysical  or  theological  doctrines. 
The  former  might  go  with  any  of  the  latter  and,  in 
point  of  fact,  did.  The  unity  of  mankind  is  for  Maz- 
zini  organic;  nations  are  organs  of  humanity. 

“We  believe,”  he  declares,  speaking  for  Republican¬ 
ism,  “in  the  Holy  Alliance  of  the  Peoples  as  the  broadest 
formula  of  association  possible  in  our  age — in  the 
liberty  and  equality  of  the  peoples  without  which  as¬ 
sociation  has  no  true  life — in  Nationality,  which  is  the 
conscience  of  the  peoples,  which  assigns  to  them  their 
share  of  work  in  association,  their  office  in  Humanity, 
and  hence  constitutes  their  mission  on  earth,  their 
individuality,  for  without  Nationality  neither  liberty 
nor  equality  is  possible — and  we  believe  in  the  holy 
Fatherland,  that  is,  the  cradle  of  nationality,  the  altar 
and  patrimony  of  the  individuals  that  compose  each 
people.” 

This  creed  has  remained,  though  crossed  by  newer 
and  later  visions  and  aspirations,  the  creed  of  the 
peoples  of  Europe.  It  is  the  living  spirit  in  the  poetry 
of  Swinburne  and  the  political  philosophy  of  Hegel. 
It  is  the  centre  from  which  departs  the  new  economic 
internationalism  of  the  Socialists  and  the  cultural 
and  financial  imperialism  of  the  pan-German  and  pan- 
Slavist  and  other  panic  organizations  that  precipitated 
the  Great  War.  Its  application  to  the  Jews,  whose 
creed  and  aspiration  it  has  been  from  the  beginning 
of  their  history,  of  the  outlook  of  whose  prophets  it  is 
a  restatement,  is  obvious  enough.  And,  indeed,  the 
application  was  made  in  Mazzini’s  day  as  a  matter 
of  course.  Not  merely  in  the  remote  speculations 
of  the  aged  Mordecai  Noah  in  the  America  of  the  ’40s. 
It  was  given  the  nearness  of  political  practicality  and 


RETURN  OF  JEWISH  NATIONALISM  49 


religious  action  in  both  England  and  France,  and 
among  Gentiles  more  largely  and  generously  than 
among  Jews.  To  Hollingsworth,  writing  in  1852 
in  England1,  the  establishment  of  a  Jewish  state 
in  Palestine  was  not  only  an  act  of  humanity  and 
justice,  but  a  political  necessity,  present  in  the  British 
mind  to  this  very  day,  in  the  safeguarding  of  the  high¬ 
way  across  Asia  Minor  to  India.2  To  Laurence  Oli- 
phant,  who  himself  settled  with  a  colony  near  Haifa, 
the  restoration  to  the  Promised  Land  was,  as  it  still 
is  to  so  many  pious  and  devout  Christians,  the  indis¬ 
pensable  preliminary  to  the  return  of  the  Saviour. 
The  idea  energized  the  mind  of  Abraham  Petavel, 
a  Protestant  minister  and  professor  in  Neuchatel. 
His  pamphlet,3  published  in  1864  in  Geneva,  utters 
much  the  same  piety  and  humanism  that  are  apparent 
in  Laurence  Oliphant,  with  somewhat  greater  regard 
for  the  political  “realities”  of  the  time.  National 
justice  to  the  Jewish  people  was  one  of  the  ruling 
passions  of  Henri  Dunant,  founder  of  the  Red  Cross 
and  author  of  the  Geneva  Conventions.  He  urged 
the  French  Alliance  Israelite  Universelle  to  settle 
the  Jews  in  Palestine;  appealed  to  the  Jews  of  Berlin, 
to  the  Anglo- J e wish  Association .  F ailing  of  sympathetic 
response  from  them,  he  organized  the  International 
Palestine  Society  and  the  Syrian  and  Palestine  Coloniza¬ 
tion  Society.  But  the  Jews  of  western  Europe  were 
still  too  preoccupied  with  piecemeal  and  individualistic 
emancipation,  with  the  dominant  abstractions  of  the 

^‘Remarks  upon  the  Present  Condition  of  the  Jews  in  Palestine.” 

2 Its  immediate  stimulus  was  the  agitation  about  the  Suez  Canal.  This 
great  project  had  stirred  Frenchmen  to  the  same  ideas.  Cf.  Denbie’s  “New 
Oriental  Problem,”  and  “The  New  Eastern  Question”  by  E.  Laharame. 

3  Devoir  des  nations  de  rendre  au  peuple  juif  sa  nationality. 


50  ZIONISM  AND  WORLD  POLITICS 


eighteenth  century,  and  the  Gentiles  were  too  absorbed 
in  their  own  problems  to  concern  themselves  with  the 
problem  of  the  Jews  in  a  purely  objective,  sociological, 
and  historical  as  well  as  a  sentimental  way.  The 
sentiment  was  to  be  noticed  all  over  Europe.  It  gave 
tone  to  much  of  the  literary  avocation  of  Beaconsfield ; 
it  was  a  note  in  a  play  of  Dumas  fils1;  it  became  a 
great  preoccupation  of  George  Eliot.  The  restoration 
of  the  Jewish  people  to  the  Promised  Land  is  a  theme 
she  returns  to  again  and  again — in  “Theophrastus  Such,” 
in  “The  Modern  Hep,  Hep,”  in  “Daniel  Deronda.”  The 
latter,  indeed,  may  be  said  to  make  this  restoration 
its  subject-matter.  And  to  the  present  day  there  is, 
to  my  mind,  no  more  eloquent  statement  of  the  senti¬ 
ment  which  energizes  Zionism  than  she  puts  in  the 
mouth  of  Mordecai: 

When  it  is  rational  to  say:  “I  know  not  my  father  or  my 
mother;  let  my  children  be  aliens  unto  me,  that  no  prayer 
of  mine  may  touch  them,”  then  will  it  be  rational  for  the 
Jew  to  say,  “I  will  seek  to  know  no  difference  between  me 
and  the  Gentile;  I  will  not  cherish  the  prophetic  conscious¬ 
ness  of  our  nationality.  Let  the  Hebrew  cease  to  be,  and 
let  all  his  memorials  be  antiquarian  trifles,  dead  as  the  wall- 
paintings  of  a  conjectured  race.  Yet  let  his  children  learn 
by  rote  the  speech  of  the  Greek,  where  he  adjures  his  fellow- 
citizens  by  the  bravery  of  those  who  fought  foremost  at 
Marathon;  let  him  learn  to  say,  ‘That  was  noble  in  Greek, 
that  is  the  spirit  of  an  immortal  nation!’  But  the  Jew  has 
no  memories  that  bind  him  to  action;  let  him  laugh  that  his 
nation  is  degraded  from  a  nation;  let  him  hold  the  monuments 
of  his  law  which  carried  within  its  frame  the  breath  of  social 
justice,  of  charity,  and  of  household  sanctities;  let  him  hold 
the  energy  of  the  prophets,  the  patient  care  of  the  masters. 


xLa  femme  de  Claude. 


RETURN  OF  JEWISH  NATIONALISM  51 


the  fortitude  of  martyred  generations,  as  mere  stuff  for 
a  professorship.  .  . 

In  the  multitude  of  the  ignorant  on  three  continents  who 
observe  our  rites  and  make  the  confession  of  Divine  Unity, 
the  soul  of  Judaism  is  not  dead.  Revive  the  organic  centre: 
let  the  unity  of  Israel  which  has  made  the  growth  and  form 
of  its  religion  be  an  outward  reality.  Looking  forward  to  a 
land  and  a  polity,  our  dispersed  people  in  all  the  ends  of  the 
earth  may  share  the  dignity  of  a  national  life  which  has  a 
voice  among  the  peoples  of  the  East  and  of  the  West — 
which  will  plant  the  wisdom  and  skill  of  our  race  so  that  it 
may  be,  as  of  old,  a  medium  of  transmission  and  understand¬ 
ing.  Let  that  come  to  pass,  and  the  living  warmth  will  spread 
to  the  weak  extremities  of  Israel  and  superstition  will  vanish, 
not  in  the  lawlessness  of  the  renegade,  but  in  the  illumination 
of  great  facts  which  widen  feeling,  and  make  all  knowledge 
alive  as  the  young  offspring  of  beloved  memories.  .  .  . 

There  is  a  store  of  wisdom  among  us  to  found  a  new  Jewish 
polity,  grand,  simple,  just,  like  the  old — a  republic  where 
there  is  equality  of  protection.  .  .  .  Then  our  race 

shall  have  an  organic  centre,  a  heart  and  a  brain  to  watch 
and  guide  and  execute;  the  outraged  Jew  shall  have  a  de¬ 
fence  in  the  court  of  the  nations,  as  the  outraged  Englishman 
or  American.  And  the  world  will  gain  as  Israel  gains.  For 
there  will  be  a  community  in  the  van  of  the  East  which 
carries  the  culture  and  the  sympathies  of  every  great  nation 
in  its  bosom;  and  there  will  be  a  land  for  a  halting-place 
of  enmities,  a  neutral  ground  for  the  East  as  Belgium 
is  for  the  West.  Difficulties?  I  know  there  are  difficulties. 
But  let  the  spirit  of  sublime  achievement  move  in  the  great 
among  our  people  and  the  work  will  begin.  .  .  . 

Let  the  torch  of  visible  community  be  lit !  Let  the  reason 
of  Israel  disclose  itself  in  a  great  outward  deed;  let  there  be 
another  great  migration,  another  choosing  of  Israel  to  be 
a  nationality,  whose  members  may  still  stretch  to  the  ends 
of  the  earth,  even  as  the  sons  of  England  and  Germany, 
whom  enterprise  carries  afar,  but  who  still  have  a  national 
hearth  and  a  tribunal  of  national  opinion.  .  .  .  Let 

the  central  fire  be  kindled  again,  and  the  light  will  reach  afar. 


52  ZIONISM  AND  WORLD  POLITICS 


The  degraded  and  scorned  of  our  race  will  learn  to  think 
of  their  sacred  land,  not  as  a  place  for  sacred  beggary, 
to  await  death  in  loathsome  idleness,  but  as  a  republic 
where  the  Jewish  spirit  manifests  itself  in  a  new  order  founded 
on  the  old,  purified,  enriched  by  experience  our  greatest 
sons  have  gathered  from  the  life  of  the  ages.  .  .  .  The 

sons  of  Judah  have  to  choose,  that  God  may  again  choose 
them.  The  Messianic  time  is  the  time  when  Israel  shall 
will  the  planting  of  the  national  ensign.  .  .  .  Let  us 

help  to  will  our  own  better  future  and  the  better  future  of 
the  world — not  renounce  our  higher  gift,  and  say,  “Let 
us  be  as  if  we  were  not  among  the  populations,”  but  choose 
our  full  heritage,  claim  the  brotherhood  of  our  nation,  and 
carry  it  into  a  new  brotherhood  with  the  nations  of  the 
Gentiles.  The  vision  is  there:  it  will  be  fulfilled. 

Nor  were  the  Jews  of  western  Europe  themselves 
altogether  untouched  by  this  resurgent  nationalism. 
By  and  large  their  first  reaction  to  the  emancipatory 
call  of  the  French  Revolution  had  been,  as  we  have 
seen,  one  of  surrender  and  self-effacement.  Suffering 
for  a  thousand  years  from  the  over-emphasis  of  their 
difference  from  the  other  families  of  mankind,  they 
accepted  eagerly  the  escape  from  suffering  which  the 
eighteenth-century  declaration  of  the  sameness  of 
all  men  opened  to  them.  They  launched  themselves 
upon  a  piteous  obliteration  of  their  corporate  entity, 
upon  the  comminution  of  their  nationality  into  its 
individuals  and  the  dilution  of  their  social  personality 
into  the  undistinguished  and  neutral  association  of  the 
reformed  congregations.  They  threw  themselves  with 
passion  into  the  republican  emancipatory  movements 
of  their  fellow-subjects  of  other  stocks.  They  de¬ 
clared  themselves  Frenchmen  or  Germans  or  English¬ 
men  of  the  Mosaic  persuasion,  and  as  such  they  laboured 


RETURN  OF  JEWISH  NATIONALISM  53 


with  not  untraditional  fervour  in  the  enfranchisement 
of  their  fellow-subjects.  Members  of  the  race  are 
particularly  conspicuous  in  the  Polish  and  Hungarian 
rebellions,  in  the  republican  uprising  in  Germany  of 
’48.  Even  more  conspicuous  were  they  in  the  new 
internationalism,  an  internationalism  running  across 
and  in  many  respects  denying  the  cosmopolitanism 
of  the  eighteenth  century  and  the  ideas  of  the  French 
Revolution. 

This  internationalism  is  a  conclusion  from  the  phi¬ 
losophy  of  Socialism.  Its  strongest  authoritative  voice 
was  that  of  the  Jew,  Karl  Marx;  its  most  heroic 
practical  defender  the  Jew,  Ferdinand  Lasalle;  its 
unseen  root  the  economic  doctrine  of  the  Jew,  David 
Ricardo. 

The  whole  of  this  internationalism  is  an  inflation 
of  a  new  social  condition  into  law,  the  identification 
of  a  changing  social  fact  with  an  unchanging  social 
principle.  The  new  social  condition  was  the  use  of 
machinery  in  industry.  The  changing  social  fact 
was  the  realignment  of  the  classes  of  men  in  accordance 
with  the  operation  of  the  automatic  machine,  the  adap¬ 
tation  of  society  to  machinery.  Machinery  was  both 
“labour-saving”  and  “over-productive.”  Machinery 
both  multiplied  the  division  of  labour  and  created  the 
unemployment  and  the  competition  of  labour.  It 
changed  the  labourer  from  a  semi-independent,  self- 
supporting  householder  to  a  factory  accessory,  from 
a  man  into  a  “hand,”  to  be  bought  in  the  open  market 
as  other  things  are  bought,  according  to  the  “law” 
of  supply  and  demand.  Society  seemed  destined 
merely  to  produce  commodities  for  foreign  markets, 
and  the  miseries  of  men,  declared  the  pundits  of  the 


54 


ZIONISM  AND  WORLD  POLITICS 


“dismal  science,”  as  political  economy  was  at  once 
called,  were  the  indispensable  condition  of  the  progress 
of  society.  The  creation  and  encouragement  of  capital 
came  to  be  considered  the  exclusive  aim  of  the  state, 
and  men  and  women  and  children  simply  the  tools  and 
servants  of  capital,  whether  as  labourers  sacrificed,  or 
employing  high  priests  sacrificing. 

Thus  the  eighteenth-century  idea  of  the  “natural 
man”  was  confronted  by  the  nineteenth-century  idea 
of  the  “economic  man.”  The  sameness  of  men  accord¬ 
ing  to  nature  was  opposed  by  the  sameness  of  men 
according  to  machinery,  and  in  the  minds  of  the  more 
reflective  men  of  the  age  the  latter  sameness  became 
the  obsessing  one.  Men  were  classified  from  the 
Ricardan  standpoint  with  respect  to  their  relation 
to  the  great  god  Capital,  their  natures  and  realities 
were  held  to  be  determined  by  whether  they  owned  it, 
or  whether  they  created  it.  Between  owners  and 
creators,  capitalists  and  labourers,  an  eternal  conflict 
had  necessarily  to  be  waged,  under  the  “iron  law  of 
wages,”  by  which  the  rich  were  constantly  growing 
richer  and  the  poor  poorer.  If  only  the  poor,  the 
workers,  would  become  conscious  of  this  conflict, 
if  they  would  recognize  their  community  of  interest 
and  cease  competing  with  each  other,  they  could  then 
wage  successful  warfare  against  their  enemies,  whose 
enmity  was  predetermined  by  the  nature  of  things: 
“Workingmen  of  all  the  world,  unite!  You  have 
nothing  to  lose  but  your  chains.” 

Such  is  the  burden  of  the  gospel  according  to  Karl 
Marx,  the  gospel  which  has  been  made  the  established 
religion  of  the  Russian  nation  and  is  becoming  such, 
in  ever-growing  proportions,  of  the  whole  population 


RETURN  OF  JEWISH  NATIONALISM  55 


of  Europe.  Its  progress  was,  as  is  natural,  slow  and 
piecemeal.  Its  exemplification  in  the  trades  unions 
has  been  more  real  and  effective  than  its  exemplifica¬ 
tion  in  the  political  party.  Like  all  gospels,  it  is  a 
compensatory  correction  of  a  condition,  not  the  descrip¬ 
tion  of  a  fact.  But  it  set  a  pace  for  Europe.  It  had 
the  courage  of  its  conclusions,  and  its  protagonists 
made  of  them  a  programme  which  they  have  tried 
with  all  their  might  and  constantly  increasing  suc¬ 
cess  to  carry  out.  They  created  the  famous  “Inter¬ 
nationale.”  They  set  themselves  against  the  tradi¬ 
tional  processes  and  institutions  of  European  society. 
They  repudiated  kings  and  priests  and  war  as  well  as 
capitalism.  They  failed,  of  course,  but  it  is  not  their 
fault  that  the  habits  and  passions  and  interests  of 
men  cannot  keep  pace  with  their  intellects.  Their 
real  fault  is  that,  being  gospellers,  they  ignored  or 
denied  the  realities  of  human  nature  which  did  not 
fit  into  their  system  of  salvation,  so  retarding  their  own 
progress  in  realization  and  converting  into  opponents 
forces  that  might  have  been  aids.  Economic  interna¬ 
tionalism,  in  short,  could  no  more  discount  nationality 
than  political  cosmopolitanism.  And  this  impossibility 
is  conspicuous  with  no  people  so  much,  perhaps,  as 
with  the  Jews. 

For  the  greater  men  of  the  race,  those  who,  in  John 
Adams’s  quaint  terms,  contributed  to  “the  ameliora¬ 
tion  of  the  philosophy  of  the  age,”  either  shut  their 
eyes  to  the  Jewish  question  or,  facing  it  squarely, 
adopted  the  nationalist  attitude.  Marx  and  Lasalle 
shut  their  eyes;  Beaconsfield  was  a  nationalist  with 
immense  racial  pride.  So  was  the  French  patriot, 
Joseph  Salvador,  son  of  a  Jewish  father  and  a  Catholic 


56  ZIONISM  AND  WORLD  POLITICS 


mother;  physician,  protagonist  of  the  “higher  criti¬ 
cism”  of  the  Bible;  close  student  of  the  constitutional 
development  of  the  ancient  Jewish  state;  hated  of  the 
clerical  party,  one  of  the  foremost  influences  in  bringing 
about  the  revolution  of  1830.  He  ( circa  1837)  called 
for  the  assembling  of  a  European  congress  for  the 
purpose  of  restoring  the  Jewish  people  to  their  promised 
land.  So  was  Lazar  Levy -Bing,  prosperous  banker 
of  Nancy,  large  participator  in  the  affairs  of  the  French 
commonwealth.  His  Zionism  had  a  religious  colour, 
derived  from  Petavel,  whose  work  had  opened  his 
eyes  to  the  Jewish  problem.  He  saw  in  the  restoration 
he  so  passionately  advocated  a  religious  as  well  as  a 
political  event,  and  in  the  restored  Jerusalem  the  ful¬ 
filment  of  the  prophecy  that  the  law  should  go  forth 
from  Zion  and  the  word  of  the  Lord  from  Jerusalem. 

Even  Jews  of  purely  philanthropic  intention,  to 
whom  piecemeal  emancipation  was  the  sole  way  out 
of  the  difficulties  of  the  Jewish  position,  could  not  elude 
the  spirit  and  outlook  of  the  age,  or  avoid  the  impregna¬ 
tion  of  the  Mazzinian  philosophy.  Thus  the  Alliance 
Israelite  Universelle  is  the  creation  of  the  philanthropic 
impulse  of  emancipated  Jews.  It  is  a  charitable 
organization,  evoked  in  1860  by  a  great  need,  rendered 
vivid  in  the  misery  and  persecution  for  religious  reasons 
suffered  by  the  Jews  of  Damascus  in  1840,  and  again, 
and  more  terribly,  in  1860.  Among  its  founders  is 
the  notable  Adolphe  Cremieux,  ten  years  later  a  min¬ 
ister  of  justice  in  the  French  Cabinet,  and  in  all  essen¬ 
tials  an  “assimilated”  and  “emancipated”  man.  Yet 
the  statement  which  explained  the  organization  he 
helped  to  found  is  near  to  the  practical  essence  of  the 
nationalist  political  philosophy  of  the  time.  “All 


RETURN  OF  JEWISH  NATIONALISM  57 


other  important  faiths,”  it  declared,  “are  represented 
in  the  world  by  nations;  that  is  to  say,  they  are  incar¬ 
nated  in  governments  especially  interested  in  them  and 
officially  authorized  to  represent  them  and  speak  for 
them  only.  Our  faith  alone  is  without  this  important 
advantage;  it  is  represented  neither  by  a  state  nor  by  a 
society,  nor  does  it  occupy  a  clearly  defined  territory.” 
And  that  the  hope  and  desire  to  create  this  “important 
advantage”  was  in  the  minds  of  the  founders  of  the 
Alliance  may  be  gathered  from  the  report  of  Charles 
Netter,  among  them  the  passionate  devotee  in  the 
creation  of  this  society,  on  the  Agricultural  School 
which  it  had  established  near  Jaffa.  The  report  tells 
the  central  committee  which  it  addresses  of  the  refuge 
from  persecution  it  is  preparing.  It  speaks  of  the 
“peaceful  winning  of  this  Holy  Land.”  It  assures  the 
committee  that  the  land  can  and  will  be  thus  won. 
Since  Netter’s  day  the  Alliance  has  had  many  a  change 
of  mood,  swayed  by  every  fashion  of  feeling  and  opin¬ 
ion  that  infected  France  and  threatened  the  position  of 
the  timorous  Frenchmen  (like  Salomon  Reinach,  a  con¬ 
temporary  director)  “of  the  Mosaic  persuasion.”  Yet 
the  whole  influence  of  the  work  of  the  Alliance ,  in 
spite  of  the  wishes  of  the  directors,  is  witness  to  the 
correctness  of  Netter’s  prediction.  .  .  . 

However,  the  distinguished  example  of  the  incapacity 
of  abstract  cosmopolitanism  and  internationalism  to 
withstand  the  realities  of  human  association  on  the 
continent  of  Europe  is  Moses  Hess.  Born  in  Germany, 
in  1812,  his  childhood  and  youth  were  passed  in  the 
turmoil  of  conflicting  systems,  ideas,  and  organiza¬ 
tions  of  which  Germany  was  the  theatre  between 
that  year  and  the  fateful  ’48.  Son  of  a  profoundly 


58 


ZIONISM  AND  WORLD  POLITICS 


orthodox  father,  his  education  stripped  his  orthodoxy 
from  him  like  an  outworn  garment  and  alienated  him 
from  his  family.  A  brief  conciliation  was  followed  by  a 
marriage  with  a  Gentile  girl  of  questionable  reputation 
and  rendered  the  alienation  permanent.  He  was  early 
impregnated  with  the  dominant  Hegelianism  of  the 
period.  But  it  was  the  Hegelianism  of  the  left,  and 
it  led  him  first  of  all  to  a  sharp  and  lasting  opposition 
to  the  Hegelianism  of  the  right,  that  Hegelianism 
which  accepted  the  Prussian  state  as  the  goal  and 
ultimacy  of  social  life,  and  its  dominion  as  the  rule  of 
spirit.  This  opposition  endured  until  his  death.  For 
his  participation  in  the  revolution  of  1848  Prussia 
proscribed  and  pursued  him  until  he  found  refuge 
in  France.  When,  in  1870,  France  expelled  him  as  an 
alien  enemy,  he  replied  with  his  book,  “The  Defeated 
Nation.’’  This  book  was  a  call  to  all  Europe  to  arm 
against  a  Germany  dominated  by  Prussia. 

The  affirmations  of  his  Hegelianism  were  primarily 
and  basically  socialistic.  By  temperament  and  apti¬ 
tude  a  libertarian  and  activist,  he  was  naturally  the 
antithesis  of  Marx,  and  the  opposition  more  than 
once  found  literary  expression.  Nevertheless,  the 
two  men  collaborated  in  the  enterprise  of  proletarian 
organization.  Hess  gave  himself  from  1845  onward  to 
the  propaganda  of  the  Communist  programme,  so  much 
so  that  Arnold  Ruge  satirized  him  as  the  “Communist 
Rabbi  Moses.”  He  contributed  to  Marx’s  JahrbiicJier. 
He  risked  his  life  by  returning  to  Germany  to  or¬ 
ganize  workmen  with  Lasalle.  In  the  intervals  he 
studied  biology  and  ethnology.  The  effect  of  his 
studies  was  the  concretion  of  the  abstraction  Humanity 
to  whose  service  he  had  dedicated  himself,  of  the  ab- 


RETURN  OF  JEWISH  NATIONALISM  59 


straction  Labour  for  whose  liberation  he  was  risking 
his  life,  into  societies  of  men  and  women  with  character, 
customs,  habits,  speech  and  culture,  history  and  tradi¬ 
tions  attached  to  places,  times,  and  circumstances.  He 
discovered,  in  a  word,  nationality.  His  conceptions 
became  very  similar  to  those  of  Mazzini,  with  the 
difference  in  philosophical  background  and  assumptions 
that  the  training  and  practical  preoccupations  of  the 
two  men  made.  The  amplification  and  vitalization 
of  view  which  Hess’s  discovery  of  nationality  effected, 
he  registered,  1862,  in  “  Rome  and  Jerusalem,  the  Latest 
National  Question.” 

This  book  is  a  series  of  twelve  letters,  addressed  to  a 
doubting  friend.  It  utters  Hess’s  whole  theory  of  life, 
with  special  emphasis  on  its  bearing  upon  the  fate  of 
the  Jewish  people.  Life  and  the  world  are,  in  his 
view,  an  organic  and  living  whole  of  which  the  con¬ 
tinuous,  infinite  multitudes  of  change  and  mutation 
in  Nature  and  in  history  are  manifestations  and  ex¬ 
pressions.  They  are,  in  the  words  of  Bergson,  to 
whom  Hess  bears  a  somewhat  striking  resemblance, 
a  single  undivided  elan  vital,  differentiating  itself 
as  life  and  the  universe.  This  elan  is  particularly 
lucid  in  human  life,  and  history  is  its  clearest  self¬ 
utterance.  In  the  development  of  this  history  each 
race  has  its  own  function  or  mission  equally  with  all 
others.  That  of  the  Jews  is  the  realization  of  the  laws 
of  social  justice  in  organized  society.  Properly  to 
discharge  this  function  the  Jewish  people  must  be 
restored  to  free  community,  to  national  independence 
in  Palestine.  Nothing  else  can  restore  them,  economic¬ 
ally,  socially,  spiritually,  to  normal.  Throughout 
the  western  world  they  are  an  uprooted  and  disin- 


60  ZIONISM  AND  WORLD  POLITICS 


herited  people,  in  its  economic  life,  middlemen  or  trad¬ 
ers  rather  than  producers;  in  its  social  and  civil  life, 
outcasts  and  pariahs,  in  the  life  of  the  spirit  chameleons, 
imitators,  because  repudiators  of  their  own  living 
tradition,  unhappily  fossilizing  in  the  eastern  world. 
The  return  to  the  Promised  Land  would  give  them 
roots,  enable  them  to  become  once  more  the  producers 
and  creators  they  should  be,  and  assure  the  discharge  of 
their  proper  functions  in  the  family  of  nations.  The 
technique  of  restoration  he  regards  as  very  simple — a 
Jewish  Colonization  Association  devoting  itself  with 
French  protection  to  the  resettling  of  Jews  in  Palestine, 
under  the  sanction  of  a  Jewish  Congress  supported 
by  the  powers. 

Hess  wrote  in  the  Epilogue  to  “Rome  and  Jerusalem” : 

The  more  perfect  a  people  is  in  its  own  special  function, 
the  more  it  appreciates  the  functional  individuality  of  other 
peoples,  and  the  more  willingly  it  borrows  from  them  the  ideas, 
conceptions,  and  inventions,  which  are  necessary  to  modern 
life.  This  tendency  is  especially  noticeable  in  the  German 
people,  and  it  certainly  does  honour  to  the  German  spirit. 

The  Jewish  nation,  therefore,  must  not  hesitate  to  follow 
France  in  all  matters  relating  to  the  political  and  social 
regeneration  of  the  nations,  and  especially  in  what  concerns 
its  own  rebirth  as  a  nation,  and  Germany  in  everything 
which  bears  upon  the  revival  of  intellectual  life.  Only  a 
stupid  reaction,  which  is  consciously  or  unconsciously  carried 
away  by  its  own  alarms,  can  bear  us  malice  when  we  sym¬ 
pathize  with  France  in  all  matters  of  a  social,  political 
nature,  and  yet  try  to  absorb  and  assimilate  everything 
good  in  German  spiritual  and  intellectual  life. 

The  cause  of  national  regeneration  of  oppressed  peoples 
can  expect  no  help  and  sympathy  from  Germany.  The 
problem  of  such  regeneration,  dating  not  from  the  second 
restoration  of  the  monarchy  in  France,  but  from  the  French 


RETURN  OF  JEWISH  NATIONALISM  61 


Revolution,  began  to  find  its  definite  solution  in  Europe 
only  recently,  with  the  outbreak  of  the  Italian  War.  Germany 
met  it  with  mockery  and  derision:  in  spite  of  the  fact  that 
it  is  urgent,  that  it  is  almost  everywhere,  even  in  Germany, 
foremost,  the  Germans  have  labelled  it,  “the  nationality 
trick.”  And  our  Jewish  democrats,  also,  exhibit  their 
German  patriotism  by  accusing  the  French  and  the  peoples 
sympathizing  with  them  of  designs  of  conquest.  The 
French,  say  the  German  politicians,  as  well  as  the  Allies 
will  only  be  exploited  by  the  second  monarchy,  in  order  to 
restrain  liberty  rather  than  to  promote  it.  The  German 
people  should,  according  to  the  profound  logic  of  these 
politicians,  obey  the  Kaiser  and  the  kings  in  order  to  be 
able  to  frustrate  the  aggressive  desires  of  the  French.  But 
these  politicians  and  patriots  forget  that  the  conquest  of 
France  and  Italy  by  Germany  to-day  would  result  merely 
in  placing  the  entire  German  people  under  police  law  and  in 
depriving  the  Jews  of  their  civil  rights  in  a  worse  manner 
than  after  the  War  of  Liberation — when  the  only  recognition 
granted  by  the  Germans  to  their  Jewish  comrades  in  arms 
was  exclusion  from  civil  life.  And  truly,  the  German  people 
and  the  German  Jews  do  not  deserve  any  better  lot  when 
they  allow  themselves,  in  spite  of  the  examples  of  history, 
to  be  entrapped  by  mediaeval  reaction. 

The  study  of  science  and  my  experiences  in  life  have  both 
served  to  confirm  my  political  sympathy  for  France,  par¬ 
ticularly  after  I  got  to  know  the  French  people.  I  have 
formulated  my  thoughts  as  follows: 

The  life  tendencies  of  a  society  are,  like  the  theories  of 
life  of  the  minds  of  men,  typical  and  primal  creations  of 
race.  Originally,  the  history  of  mankind  moved  only  in  the 
circle  of  struggle — struggles  of  race,  struggles  of  class.  The 
race  struggle  is  primary;  that  of  class,  secondary.  The  last 
dominating  race  is  the  German.  But,  thanks  to  the  French 
people — who  succeeded  not  only  in  reconciling  race  antago¬ 
nisms  in  their  own  land,  but  also  in  uprooting  every  form  of 
race  domination  within  its  borders — the  race  struggle  is 
nearing  its  end.  And  with  that  the  class  struggle  will  also 
end.  The  equalization  of  all  classes  of  society  will  neces- 


62  -  ZIONISM  AND  WORLD  POLITICS 


sarily  follow  the  emancipation  of  the  races,  for  equalization 
will  become  simply  a  scientific  problem  in  social  economics. 

Yet  it  seems  as  if  a  final  race  war  is  unavoidable  if  the 
German  politicians,  failing  to  apprehend  the  situation,  make 
no  endeavour  to  oppose  the  mighty  sweep  of  reaction.  This, 
left  to  itself,  will  ultimately  carry  Germany  into  collision 
with  the  Latin  peoples  and  entangle  the  progressive  German 
democrats  in  the  net  of  romantic  demagoguery.  Twice 
during  the  present  century  did  medievalism  frustrate 
the  effort  of  the  German  people  for  political'  and  social 
regeneration — once  during  the  War  of  Liberation  and  again 
during  the  Italian  War.  It  did  so  by  appealing  to  the  racial 
instincts  of  the  lords  of  war  who  regard  themselves  as  lords 
of  the  land  by  divine  right  and  the  people  as  their  rightly 
inherited  slaves.  It  is  not  impossible,  in  case  of  a  war  be¬ 
tween  Italy  and  Austria,  that  German  democracy  will  for 
the  third  time  be  engulfed  in  the  whirlpool  of  the  reaction¬ 
aries  and  join  hands  with  the  Austrians  in  a  struggle  for 
race  domination  the  outcome  of  which  must  adversely 
affect  progress.  But  out  of  the  last  race  struggle  .  .  . 

there  will  ensue  no  fresh  dominant  race  and  the  equality 
of  the  historical  peoples  of  the  world  will  follow  as  a  neces¬ 
sary  result. 

Hess’s  metaphysics,  it  will  be  seen,  has  its  alter¬ 
natives — what  metaphysic  has  not? — but  his  sociolog¬ 
ical  acumen  and  his  historical  judgment  are  almost 
contemporary.  Both  the  quotation  from  the  Epilogue 
to  “Rome  and  Jerusalem”  and  the  storm  which  his  work 
raised  in  German  Jewry  are  witness.  The  storm  was 
only  a  passing  storm.  It  led  the  historian  Graetz 
to  remark  upon  it — upon  the  anger  of  the  anti-Semites, 
the  fears  of  the  Jewish  cosmopolitans,  the  hopes  of 
the  orthodox.  But  Graetz  drew  no  conclusions.  He 
was  too  timid.  The  great  bulk  of  the  Jews  of  western 
Europe,  particularly  those  of  Germany,  were  too  timid. 
Hess  called  them  to  self-assertion  and  self-help.  Their 


RETURN  OF  JEWISH  NATIONALISM  63 


reply  was — self -concealment  and  impotence.  They 
were  afraid  collectively  to  conquer  freedom  as  a  people’s 
victory;  they  were  not  afraid  to  have  emancipation 
ungraciously  thrown  to  them  as  a  master’s  gene¬ 
rosity. 


CHAPTER  VI 


SECULAR  NATIONALISM  AMONG  THE  JEWS  OF  EASTERN 

EUROPE 

THAT  Eastern  Jewry  should,  all  things  considered, 
provide  its  fair  counterpart  of  Western  Jewry  was,  of 
course,  natural.  It  did  reproduce,  line  for  line,  the 
disturbances  and  perturbations  which  shook  the 
Jews  of  western  Europe.  It  reproduced  them,  but 
with  a  difference.  In  this  difference  lies,  however, 
the  secret  of  the  vitality  of  Zionism  and  the  continuity 
and  vigour  of  its  vision  and  aspiration  in  the  hearts 
of  the  great  bulk  of  the  Jewish  nationality,  whose  home 
is  in  central  and  eastern  Europe.  Its  history,  from 
the  failure  of  the  Sabbattian  adventure  on,  leaves 
nothing  to  be  desired  for  tragic  irony.  The  govern¬ 
ment  of  Poland  itself  was  disintegrating.  Kings, 
powerless  before  the  unspeakable  Shlakhta,  whose 
arrogance,  sloth,  and  selfishness  ruined  Poland,  per¬ 
force  turned  the  kingship  into  an  engine  of  intrigue. 
The  royal  protection  written  into  the  terms  of  the 
Jewish  charter  became  a  scrap  of  paper.  The  Jews 
themselves  were  compelled  to  become  the  victims  and 
the  instruments  of  the  irresponsibilities  of  the  landed 
magnates,  whose  absolutism  on  their  lands  was  ex¬ 
ceeded  only  by  their  misrule.  In  addition  to  the  ex¬ 
ploitation  and  abuse  of  these  magnates,  the  Jews  had 
to  suffer  the  aggression  of  the  urban  German  burgher 

64 


SECULAR  NATIONALISM 


65 


class,  always  pressing  to  eliminate  the  Jewish  rival, 
and  the  persecution  of  the  Churchman,  whose  religious 
zeal  had  a  superlatively  powerful  dynamic  in  economic 
greed. 

The  conflicting  impositions,  demands,  and  restrictions 
of  these  three  classes  broke  up  the  integrity  of  the 
Jewish  community.  Their  pressure  squeezed  the  vital¬ 
ity  out  of  the  Congressus  Judaicus,  destroyed  its  au¬ 
thority,  and  denuded  it  of  its  representative  character. 
It  converted  the  Kahal  from  a  town  meeting  into  a 
tyrannical  corporation  of  oligarchs.  It  cut  off  the 
contact  of  the  Jews  both  as  individuals  and  as  nation¬ 
ality  from  the  rest  of  the  world. 

At  just  the  time  when  the  bans  and  taboos  of  me- 
diaevalism  were  broken  in  Europe  and  the  spirit  of 
man  could  adventure  free  through  thoughts  and  things, 
persecution  and  disaster  imposed  them  upon  Jewry. 
The  thought  and  feeling  of  the  great  Jewish  community 
turned  inward  and  fed  upon  itself.  The  spirit  so 
nourished  is  a  queer  and  twisted  thing  of  dialectic, 
passion,  and  devoutness,  as  irrelevant  to  the  realities 
of  the  business  of  living  as  anything  mediaeval  Chris¬ 
tianity  so  devised.  It  converted  changing  social 
customs  into  everlasting  rituals,  accidents  of  fashion 
in  garments  and  hairdressing  into  religious  vestment, 
accidents  of  diet  into  sacraments.  It  imagined  a  gross, 
material  Otherworld  that  echoed  to  the  last  nuance 
the  literalness  of  mediaeval  Christianism  of  which  it  had 
until  then  been  free.  It  found  in  the  wonder-working 
rabbi  of  the  Chassidic  sect  the  precise  analogue  of 
the  Christian  mystic,  the  saint,  the  hermit,  the  lay 
brother  who  did  miracles  for  a  price,  and  it  clung 
to  him  with  a  pas°;on  of  faith  and  devotion  which 


66  ZIONISM  AND  WORLD  POLITICS 

r  ' 

is  a  secure  measure  of  the  degradation  and  horror  into 
which  the  community  had  fallen.  Not  an  ill  nor  an 
evil  in  this  life  but  had  its  precise  and  material  com¬ 
pensation  in  the  world  to  come!  That  world  assumed 
all  the  specification  and  definiteness  of  the  Christian 
eschatological  system — a  region  of  the  habitation  of 
dead  saints  and  unborn  saviours,  of  delectable  food 
and  drink  and  clothing,  of  magical  efficiency  and 
of  vengeance  upon  the  persecutor.  The  lineaments 
of  the  real  Zion  were  absorbed  into  it.  The  true 
Messiah  became  in  effect  a  supernatural  being,  his 
appearance  contingent  upon  supernatural  events  and 
the  restoration  of  Palestine  a  heavenly  thing,  uncon¬ 
nected  with  things  of  earth.  Life  throughout  this 
period,  which  lasted  some  two  hundred  years,  and 
aspects  of  which  are  still  dominant,  was  for  the  Jews 
a  somnambulism  wherein  the  community  and  individual 
escaped  from  the  harsh  oppression  of  the  poignant 
facts.  The  barren  dialectic  of  Rabbinism  and  the 
hopeless  inarticulation  of  mysticism  were  the  whole 
of  it.  For  once  in  their  history  the  Jews  were  at  last 
truly  and  completely  a  “religious,”  that  is,  a  demoral¬ 
ized,  people. 

The  political  event  which  broke  into  this  somnambu¬ 
lism  was  the  partition  of  Poland.  The  partition  divided 
Jewry  no  less  than  the  Poles  between  three  new  and 
active  forces,  whose  impact  brought  not  only  different 
and  new  oppression,  but  also  different  and  new  social 
and  intellectual  contacts.  Prussian  and  Austrian 
and  Russian  monarchs,  much  under  the  seductive 
infection  of  the  liberal  ideas  of  the  eighteenth  century, 
could  not  endure  that  their  Jews  should  be  different 
from  their  other  subjects.  They  brought  to  bear 


SECULAR  NATIONALISM 


67 


upon  them  all  the  malicious  pressure  of  bureaucratic 
machinery  to  “modernize”  and  “assimilate”  them. 
That  this  should  be  met  with  stiffening  resistance  was 
inevitable.  Neither  Joseph  I  of  Austria,  nor  the 
first  Russian  Alexander,  nor  his  successor  Nicholas, 
succeeded  in  developing  among  Jews  any  actual  living 
movement  toward  modernization.  The  Jews  went  as 
far  as  they  were  compelled  to,  and  no  farther.  And 
wherever  the  pressure  was  relaxed,  they  reverted  to 
the  initial  form.  Nevertheless,  they  did  get  modern¬ 
ized,  and  with  unparalleled  swiftness.  The  power 
which  achieved  this  was  not,  however,  political  but 
intellectual  and  social,  and  it  operated  not  by  force, 
but  by  contagion. 

The  process  of  its  operation  is  usually  called  the 
“Haskalah”  or  Enlightenment.  It  is  an  inward  change 
in  the  complexus  of  the  Jewish  nationality  in  eastern 
Europe,  responding  to  the  contacts  of  the  new  peoples, 
new  forces,  and  new  ideas  which  the  partition  of  Poland 
brought  about.  It  began  in  Germany,  spread  thence 
to  Austria  and  to  Russia.  Its  great  protagonist  was 
Moses  Mendelssohn.  A  Polish  Jew,  come  to  place 
and  power  in  Berlin,  Mendelssohn  felt,  and  felt  truly, 
that  the  renewal  of  Jewry  must  come  first  through 
the  force  of  liberal  ideas,  such  ideas  as  were  the  currency 
of  the  fashionable  and  humane  cosmopolitanism  of  his 
day.  The  movement  he  began  was  a  movement  to 
“Germanize” — in  his  day,  the  equivalent  of  “civilize” 
in  all  eastern  Europe — in  the  matter  of  dress  and 
manners  (in  the  course  of  time  to  dress  or  to  be  other¬ 
wise  “deitch”  became  a  matter  for  excommunication) 
as  well  as  in  science  and  letters.  But  the  medium 
for  the  transmission  of  these  “German”  ideas  was 


68  ZIONISM  AND  WORLD  POLITICS 


inevitably  Hebrew,  always  the  lingua  franca  of  the 
multi-lingual  Jewish  people.  Hebrew,  the  holy  tongue, 
was  to  be  used  for  profane  and  secular  purposes. 
There  is  the  true  animus  of  the  Haskalah.  It  was  an 
enterprise  in  secularization,  and  the  resistance  to  it 
took  the  same  form  as  some  centuries  earlier  had  been 
taken  by  the  resistance  to  the  renaissance  in  the  wider 
world.  Religion  was  set  over  against  wisdom,  super¬ 
stition  against  knowledge,  authority  against  freedom. 
The  protagonists  of  the  Haskalah  made  alliances  with 
the  government,  to  effect  their  secularizing  ends. 
The  more  the  Rabbinists  insisted  on  the  dominion 
of  their  power  the  further  the  protagonists  of  Haskalah, 
called  by  the  Jews  Maskilim ,  went  in  the  loosening  of  a 
community  which  was  merely,  and  so,  superstitiously, 
religious.  In  the  end,  the  confrontation  ceased  to  be 
one  of  religious  Rabbinism  or  scholasticism  with  secular 
Hebraism.  It  became  a  confrontation  of  orthodoxy 
with  “assimilation.” 

Of  this  assimilation,  of  this  perennial  detachment 
of  Jew  after  Jew  from  his  community  and  his  absorption 
in  the  community  of  the  non- Jewish  majority,  the 
protagonists  of  the  Haskalah  had  conceived  high  hopes. 
The  impulsive  and  uncertain  benevolences  of  Alexander 
II,  the  “Tzar  liberator,”  which  opened  to  Jews  the 
schools  of  the  land  and  promised  improvement  of 
their  economic  ills,  drew  thousands  of  them  into  a  new 
world;  to  their  ardour  and  inexperience,  a  freer  and 
more  joyous  world.  It  seemed  to  them  as  if  the  liberal¬ 
ism  of  the  nineteenth  century  were  about  to  succeed 
in  accomplishing  in  Russia  what  it  had  failed  to  do 
in  western  Europe.  The  liberation  and  absorption 
of  the  Jews  was  to  take  place  by  an  administrative 


SECULAR  NATIONALISM 


69 


ukase  and  the  force  of  circumstances:  no  Jew  had  need 
to  do  anything  but  prepare  himself  intellectually  and 
wait. 

The  young  hopefuls  were  disillusioned.  Alexander 
II  himself  repented  of  his  wisdom  just  before  his  as¬ 
sassination,  and  his  successor,  with  the  assistance  of 
the  devout  Pobiedonostzeff,  arranged  that  the  holy 
mediseval  tradition  regarding  the  treatment  of  the 
Jews  should  in  no  way  be  desecrated.  The  young 
Jewish  hopefuls  discovered,  as  so  many  of  other  races 
and  times  did,  that  the  solution  of  a  problem  of 
community  by  self-attrition  was  not  a  working  solution 
for  the  community.  They  found  themselves,  therefore, 
uprooted,  loose,  tramps  in  mind  and  body,  with  more 
energy  than  efficiency.  This  energy  they  threw  into 
the  vernacular  and  Hebrew  press,  which  they  used 
as  the  device  to  get  the  benefits  of  their  experiences 
before  the  Jewish  masses,  hoping,  and  succeeding, 
by  this  means  to  recover  or  establish  a  ground  for  their 
existence.  No  people  in  the  world  is  so  completely 
sensitive  to  the  printed  word  as  the  Jew,  and  the 
Haskalah  became,  almost  overnight,  a  mass-movement. 
To  an  extraordinary  degree  it  laughed  supernaturalism, 
magic,  and  myth  out  of  court.  It  popularized  science 
and  radical  economics.  It  created  a  Yiddish  and  neo- 
Hebrew  belles  lettres.  The  realities  of  this  renaissance 
ensue  over  a  period  of  hardly  two  generations  of  the 
nineteenth  century.  Its  achievement  seems  a  miracle 
— until  it  is  remembered  that  the  Jews  were  without 
any  other  institutions  either  for  expressing,  conveying, 
or  stabilizing  opinion.  They  were  literally  and  ex¬ 
clusively  the  people  of  the  book — and  the  newspaper. 

The  interpenetration  of  science,  higher  criticism. 


70  ZIONISM  AND  WORLD  POLITICS 


“Jewish  science,”  political  and  economic  theory, 
religious  speculation  and  belletristic  fabrication  with  a 
realizing  sense  of  the  great  Jewish  tradition  which 
was  the  stable  mind  of  the  Jewish  masses  led  toward 
a  recovery  of  the  normal  outlook  upon  the  Jewish  posi¬ 
tion  and  destiny.  Haskalah  imperceptibly  took  on 
the  features  of  Jewish  nationalism.  Passive  emancipa¬ 
tion  at  the  hands  of  the  non- Jewish  majority,  which 
was  the  hope  of  secularists,  gave  way  to  plans  and 
programmes  of  active  emancipation  of  the  Jewish 
people  by  the  Jewish  people  themselves. 

The  earliest  significant  voice— which  Hess  had  heard 
and  to  which  he  had  responded — was  that  of  Hirsch 
Kalischer,  a  rabbi  of  the  orthodox  church  in  Thon, 
Prussia.  His  whole  work  is  witness  of  the  interpene¬ 
tration  of  modernism  and  tradition  which  the  great 
conflict  of  the  Haskalah  resulted  in.  The  Jewish 
people,  Kalischer  wrote1,  needed  to  reinterpret  their 
life  and  destiny.  They  had  been  taught  to  wait  for 
the  realization  of  the  Messianic  hope  through  a  miracle, 
but  the  true  basis  of  realization  must  be  self-help. 
By  means  of  a  colonization  society  working  in  a  modern 
way  under  modern  conditions2  the  restoration  of  the 
Jewish  people  to  the  Promised  Land  and  to  freedom 
might  be  achieved.  At  the  outset,  Kalischer  had  more 
influence  in  the  West  than  in  the  East.  The  creation 
of  the  Alliance  Israelite  Universelle  was  due  to  his  in¬ 
spiration  and  Hess’s  own  practical  proposals  echo  his. 
But  in  the  East  the  heady  taste  of  secular  freedom 
kept  the  young  men  assimilative  and  the  old  men 
resistantly  set  in  scholasticism  a  generation  longer. 

1“Emmuah  Jesharah, ”  1860. 

2Derishat  Zion,  1864. 


SECULAR  NATIONALISM 


71 


It  was  the  anti-Semitic  reaction  of  the  ’80s  which 
there  brought  them  to  realization  of  the  social  realities 
of  the  Jewish  position.  Its  mark  is  Leon  Pinsker’s 
“  Auto-emancipation. ”  This  book,  by  a  man  as  cos¬ 
mopolitan  as  Hess  himself,  makes  an  accurate  and 
still  valid  analysis  of  the  Jewish  position.  The  world, 
it  points  out,  has  been  dealing  with  Jews  distributively, 
not  collectively.  Emancipation  has  been  piecemeal, 
where  it  has  occurred  at  all.  The  Jews  have  themselves 
been  content  with  this  condition.  They  have  them¬ 
selves  denied  their  national  reality,  though  it  stared 
them  in  the  face.  In  consequence,  they  have  been 
treated  as  living  individual  members  of  a  dead  nation, 
whose  entity  involved  them  like  a  ghost,  insubstantial, 
yet  real  enough  to  awaken  fear  and  dislike.  As  in¬ 
dividuals  they  are  twice  homeless — of  uncertain  and 
ambiguous  status  in  the  land  of  their  sojourn  and 
without  any  homeland  to  which  they  can  refer  or  with 
regard  to  which  they  can  change  their  status.  Thus 
they  are  everywhere  in  the  modern  world  legally  and 
formally  free  and  socially  outcast.  The  only  way 
to  resolve  this  ambiguity  is  to  create  a  homeland,  a 
centre  of  corporate  reference — anywhere.  This  can 
be  done  by  the  union  of  various  Jewish  alliances,  the 
creation  of  a  single  directorate  and  of  a  fiscal  agency 
that  could  raise  money  through  the  sale  of  lands  and 
the  necessary  subscriptions. 

How  near  to  the  actual  feeling  of  the  vital  generation 
of  Jewry  Pinsker’s  analysis  came  may  be  gathered  from 
its  results.  For  the  first  time  since  Sabbattai,  a  con¬ 
crete  proposal  bore  practical  fruits.  A  society  was 
organized  in  Odessa,  with  Pinsker  at  its  head.  Branches 
sprang  up  wherever  in  a  Jewish  community  thoughtful 


72  ZIONISM  AND  WORLD  POLITICS 


men  congregated.  By  1890  the  Hovevei  Zion,  as  it 
was  called,  had  chapters  in  Austria,  Germany,  England, 
Rumania,  France,  the  United  States.  It  had  under¬ 
taken  the  adventure.  Bodies  of  ignorant,  untried, 
and  tenderly  nurtured  young  idealists  had  gone  to 
Palestine  to  found  colonies  in  swamps,  to  suffer  decima¬ 
tion,  to  persist,  and  in  the  end  to  conquer:  sufferers 
from  Rumanian  pogroms  had  gone;  the  victims  of 
Russians;  and  those  who  were  moved  only  by  the 
love  of  Zion.  To  all  the  Odessa  committee  held  out  a 
helping  hand,  very  often  mistakenly  and  ignorantly, 
but  always  with  certainty  as  to  the  ultimate  purpose. 
Its  work  in  Palestine  was  met  and  supplemented  with 
the  work  of  the  Alliance  Israelite,  and  of  the  great 
benevolent  Edmond  de  Rothschild.  Its  mistakes  were 
met  and  supplemented  also.  But  underneath  the 
intrigue,  the  error,  the  comedy,  and  the  irony  which 
the  work  in  Palestine  developed  there  was  a  living  thing 
taking  root  in  the  soil  and  sending  shoots  in  the  air 
and  growing  free.  Observers  of  the  social  process 
could  say  truly  that  the  Jewish  people  was  finding 
itself  at  last. 


CHAPTER  VII 


AHAD  Ha’aM,  HERZL,  AND  THE  DEVELOPMENT  OF  ORGAN¬ 
IZED  ZIONISM 

HOW  completely  and  basically  the  Jewish  people 
was  finding  itself  may  be  gathered  from  the  history 
of  what  is  technically  and  formally  Zionism  itself. 
In  the  mind  of  Theodor  Herzl,  the  initiator  of  the  or¬ 
ganized  international  movement,  it  took  shape  first 
of  all  as  a  reply  to  anti-Semitism,  which  from  the  ’80s 
to  the  end  of  the  nineteenth  century  infected  Europe 
like  a  disease.  Anti-Semitism,  Herzl  argued  in  his 
Judenstaat ,  is  an  ineradicable  and  growing  social 
phenomenon.  The  world  repudiates  Jews  who  come 
to  it  as  Jews  purely,  who  have  not  rejected  their  na¬ 
tionality  and  committed  national  suicide.  Such  a 
suicide,  even  if  it  were  desirable,  is  a  terrible  and  tragic 
process  of  suffering,  and  impossible  to  accomplish. 
Its  alternative  is  the  liberation  of  the  Jewish  national¬ 
ity  as  such,  and  this  liberation  must  take  the  form 
of  restoring  the  Jewish  national  home.  The  agency 
would  be  a  world-wide  society  of  Jews  which  should 
make  preliminary  political  and  economic  investiga¬ 
tions  and  create  a  Jewish  company,  with  a  capital 
of  $10,000,000  and  headquarters  in  London,  to  carry 
out  the  enterprise  of  colonization  by  obtaining  a 
charter  from  the  Turk  and  operating  under  the  same 
privileges  as,  say,  the  British  East  India  Company. 

73 


74  ZIONISM  AND  WORLD  POLITICS 


Practical  initiative  did  not,  however,  come  from  the 
author  of  the  Judenstaat ;  it  came  from  the  Kadimah 
of  Vienna,  an  organization  of  students,  in  theory  and 
practice  imbued  with  the  spirit  of  insurgent  nationalism 
that  dominated  central  Europe.  This  organization 
pledged  its  support  to  Herzl  in  every  effort  to  bring 
together  his  Society  of  Jews.  From  various  com¬ 
munities  in  the  heart  of  Jewry  came  memorials  and 
appeals.  Herzl  went  to  England,  where  Zangwill 
introduced  him  to  the  Jewish  community  of  the  United 
Kingdom. 

At  last  the  great  enterprise  was  launched  and  the 
first  call  for  the  Zionist  Congress  was  sent  out.  Over 
it  the  Jewry  of  the  world  divided  sharply — the  prosper¬ 
ous  minority  of  the  West,  represented  chiefly  by  rabbis 
of  the  reformed  sects,  resented  and  denounced  it. 
The  great  unprosperous  majority  of  both  the  East 
and  the  West  welcomed  and  acclaimed  it  as  the  first 
step  in  their  divinely  promised  salvation.  The  old 
controversy  between  assimilation  and  freedom  flamed 
up.  The  old  arguments  were  repeated  and  the  old 
rancours  renewed,  with,  however,  an  unprecedented 
intensity  deriving  from  the  efficiency  and  vitality 
of  the  Zionist  enterprise.  The  first  Congress,  held  at 
Basle,  Switzerland,  in  1897,  was  an  irrefutable  demon¬ 
stration  of  Jewish  national  solidarity:  demonstration 
of  the  organic  interdependence,  of  the  diversity  in 
unity  which  is  nationality,  of  all  extremes  of  Jewish 
life  and  thought.  The  platform  it  adopted:  “The 
aim  of  Zionism  is  to  create  in  Palestine  for  the  Jewish 
people  a  publicly  recognized  homeland  under  legal 
guarantees,”  became  a  foundation  and  a  centre  absorb¬ 
ing  and  coordinating  all  factions  of  Jewry  to  the  com- 


AHAD  HA ’AM  AND  HERZL 


75 


mon  purpose  it  expressed.  It  brought  together  ortho¬ 
dox  and  freethinkers,  capitalists  and  socialists,  the 
East  and  the  West;  it  gave  their  unconscious  and  blind 
solidarity  a  conscious  and  envisioning  ground.  It 
rationalized  the  Jewish  being. 

This  rationalization  is  perhaps  the  most  interesting 
aspect  of  an  enterprise  richer  in  handicaps  and  other¬ 
worldly  survivals,  particularly  in  sentiment,  than  in 
practical  endeavour  and  achievement.  It  took  the 
form  of  a  conflict  and  reconciliation  of  what  might  be 
called  the  colonial  temper  of  the  western  Zionists  and 
nationalist  temper  of  the  eastern  ones.  The  first 
Congress  was  naturally  dominated  by  the  great  Jews 
of  the  West — in  effect  children  of  the  tradition  of  Europe 
— by  Herzl,  Nordau,  Zangwill,  and  their  kind.  To  them 
Zionism  was  the  solution  of  a  question  primarily 
economic  and  political.  Its  achievement  was  to  be 
remedial  rather  than  creative,  and  its  value  one  of 
relief  rather  than  of  construction.  But  to  the  children 
of  the  Haskalah  whose  voice  was  the  voice  of  the  living 
Jewish  nationality  in  eastern  Europe,  Zionism  had  of 
necessity  to  be  far  more  than  a  relief  and  a  remedy. 
In  their  reflection  and  aspiration  it  was  to  be  the  en¬ 
franchisement  of  the  creative  energies  of  the  Jewish 
people,  the  conservation  and  reconsecration  of  the 
Hebraic  spirit  to  the  service  of  mankind  in  the  Hebrew 
land.  For  them  Zionism  was  primarily  the  condition 
of  a  spiritual  and  cultural  recovery;  economic  and 
political  changes  were  tools,  not  ends  in  themselves, 
and  tools  which  they  did  not  understand  and  could 
not  care  for. 

The  most  powerful  but  also  the  most  obscurantist 
(because  he  insisted  that  the  desired  effect  must  also 


76  ZIONISM  AND  WORLD  POLITICS 


be  used  as  its  own  cause — he  urged  the  priority  of  a 
merely  “ cultural  centre”)  voice  of  this  conviction 
was  Asher  Ginsberg.  No  Jew  of  modern  times  has 
had  so  profound  an  influence  upon  the  Jewish  people 
because  no  Jew  has  so  adequately  effected  in  his  own 
thinking  and  outlook  that  fusion  of  contemporaneity 
with  tradition  which  is  the  constant  ideal  of  the  Jewish 
as  of  every  other  nationalist.  In  many  ways  an  autodi- 
dact,  Ginsberg,  whose  pen  name  is  Ahad  Ha’am,  had, 
like  most  young  Jews  of  his  class  and  generation,  studied 
a  little  in  Germany,  a  little  in  Switzerland.  He  had 
absorbed  both  from  the  writings  of  Smolenskin  and  the 
intellectual  temper  of  the  world  of  his  youth  the  spirit 
and  the  method  of  the  Hegelians  of  the  left,  and  his  use 
of  these  has  served  satisfactorily  to  reconcile  the  an¬ 
tagonisms  of  the  factions  of  the  nation.  Each  national¬ 
ity,  Ginsberg  holds,  is  characterized  by  a  spirit,  an 
essence,  a  central  spontaneity,  which  expresses  itself 
in  all  the  diverse  forms  of  the  national  life:  economic, 
social,  political,  religious,  literary,  and  so  on.  The 
opposites  of  this  expression  are  invariably  fused  in  a 
common  resultant,  a  synthesis,  which  alone  is  the 
adequate  expression  of  the  spirit.  Thus  the  other¬ 
worldliness  of  the  Essenes  and  the  worldliness  of  the 
Sadducees  are  reconciled  in  the  moralism  of  the  Phari¬ 
sees,  who  are  therefore  the  true  representatives  of  the 
Jewish  spirit  of  their  time.  And  so  through  every 
phase  of  the  history  of  the  Jewish  people,  the  present 
phase  excepted.  The  contemporary  Jew  of  the  Ghetto 
is  too  restricted  and  rigid  in  his  life  and  vision  to  be 
truly  expressive  of  the  Jewish  spirit;  the  “emanci¬ 
pated”  Jew  is  too  uprooted  and  errant.  The  combina¬ 
tion  of  stability  and  freedom  which  allows  for  true 


AHAD  HA ’AM  AND  HERZL 


77 


emancipation  is  possible  only  by  the  recovery  of  a 
fixed  centre  of  national  culture  where  the  Jew  may  be 
a  Jew  by  inclusion  and  absorption  rather  than  as  in 
the  Ghetto  by  exclusion  and  rejection.  This  centre 
is  necessarily  Palestine.  Tradition,  hope,  and  work 
make  it  so,  and  the  academic  settlement  of  Palestine, 
the  establishment  there  of  concrete  embodiments  of 
the  Hebraic  spirit  in  cultural  institutions  is  the  only 
true  method  of  saving  a  living  Hebraism  for  the  service 
of  mankind. 

This  teaching  made  of  Ahad  Ha’am  a  protagonist 
and  leader  in  the  movement  of  Hovevei  Zion.  Herzlian 
Zionism  took  him  by  surprise  and  his  relation  to  it  has 
been  that  of  a  critical  onlooker.  The  bulk  of  the  Rus¬ 
sian  Zionists,  that  is,  the  bulk  of  the  Zionists,  were  of 
his  following.  They  opposed  “practical”  and  “cul¬ 
tural”  enterprises  to  “political”  and  diplomatic  ones, 
the  winning  of  the  spirit  to  the  saving  of  the  body.  Their 
victory  was  far-reaching,  for  they  modified  the  temper 
and  spirit  of  Herzl  also — partly  by  combat,  partly  by 
contagion.  By  combat,  through  the  steady  and  relent¬ 
less  party  opposition,  culminating  in  the  scene  at  the 
Congress  of  1903,  where,  in  spite  of  the  bitter  need  of 
relief  from  the  terrible  persecutions  of  the  period,  they 
made  overwhelming  sacrifice  by  rejecting  the  British 
offer  of  Uganda.  By  contagion,  through  the  slow 
modification  of  Herzl’s  purposes  from  remedialism 
to  construction,  because  of  contact  with  the  spirit 
and  aspiration  of  the  Jewish  people  as  it  lived  and 
laboured.  This  is  to  be  observed  in  all  his  publications 
from  1897  on,  but  particularly  in  “Altneuland.”  In  that 
book  the  writer’s  preoccupation  is  no  longer  to  escape 
from  persecution.  The  writer’s  preoccupation  is  the 


78  ZIONISM  AND  WORLD  POLITICS 


structure  and  organization  of  a  just  state.  His  ex¬ 
perience  had  set  his  Zionism  in  a  more  comprehensive, 
a  truer  vision,  a  fuller  conception  of  its  roots  and  im¬ 
plicated  fruits.  But  Herzl  saw  what  Ahad  Ha’am 
did  not;  what,  indeed,  he  was  incapable  of  seeing — that 
a  free  and  living  culture  is  not  the  source  but  the  out¬ 
come  of  an  organized  and  stable  life;  that  consequently 
the  alternative  to  political  action  such  as  Herzl  always 
stood  for  was  not  “colonization”  or  “cultural  activity” 
but  one  more  Ghetto,  this  time  in  Palestine,  added  to 
the  others  already  existing;  that  this  new  Ghetto 
might  be  a  Hebrew-speaking  Ghetto  and  a  very 
learned  Ghetto,  but,  that  without  self-government  and 
economic  competency,  it  never  could  be  more  than 
a  Ghetto.1  Hence,  in  Herzl’s  view  “cultural”  ac¬ 
tivity  might — indeed,  should — accompany  “political” 
action,  but  could  never  be  a  substitute  for  it.  Herzl’s 
statesmanship  aimed  inexorably  at  a  Jewish  state  in 
Palestine.  And  this  state,  conceived  at  last  in  terms 
of  social  justice,  was  his  foremost  concern  when  he 
died. 

The  activities  which  had  preoccupied  him  and  his 
following  from  the  first  Congress  in  1897  to  the  day  of 
his  death,  fall,  broadly  speaking,  into  three  modes: 
the  organization  of  Jewry,  the  development  of  the 
fiscal  agencies  of  the  organization,  and  political  and 
diplomatic  operations. 

The  first  of  these  endeavours  was  carried  on  in  the 
broadest  of  democratic  terms.  The  Zionist  Organiza¬ 
tion  was  conceived  of,  and  composed,  internationally. 

1The  complete  absurdity  of  Ahad  Ha’amism  is  evidenced  by  the  Arabized 
character  of  the  so-called  successful  plantations  like  Petah  Tikwah  and 
Rishon-le-Zion  which  are  Arab  villages  with  Jewish  lords  of  the  manor. 


AHAD  HA  ’AM  AND  HERZL 


79 


The  first  Congress,  of  necessity,  was  made  up  of  dele¬ 
gates  representing  the  Jews  of  all  the  world  who  were 
interested,  without  regard  either  to  number,  age,  basis 
of  representation,  or  any  of  the  other  matters  that 
are  fundamental  to  representative  government.  The 
organization  which  was  subsequently  formulated  made 
the  Congress  central.  This  was  thenceforward  to  be 
composed  of  delegates,  not  less  than  twenty-four 
years  old,  who  received  their  mandates  from  the  mem¬ 
bers  of  the  Zionist  Organization.  These,  to  become 
members,  needed  to  be  at  least  eighteen  years  old,  and 
to  pay  the  Shekel,  or  poll-tax,  of  twenty-five  cents. 
They  were  joined  together  in  autonomous  national 
societies  or  federations,  like  the  English  Zionist  Federa¬ 
tion  or  the  Federation  of  American  Zionists.  Any 
four  hundred  of  the  members  could  elect  a  delegate  to 
the  Congress.  The  Congress  determined  the  policies 
and  actions  of  the  organization.  At  first  it  met  yearly, 
then  biennially.  Its  alternate  was  the  Central  Commit¬ 
tee,  composed  of  elected  representatives  of  each  national 
organization  in  proportion  to  its  numbers,  and  de- 
.  signed  to  sit,  when  the  Congress  was  not  in  session, 
with  the  Inner  Actions  Committee.  The  Congress 
elected  the  twenty-five  members  of  the  Actions  (Execu¬ 
tive)  Committee  and  designated  the  five  to  seven  in¬ 
dividuals  on  it  who  were  to  compose  the  Inner  Actions 
Committee.  This  latter  was  the  administrative  agency, 
the  ministry,  of  the  organization  and  was  in  continuous 
session.  During  Herzl’s  lifetime  its  interests  were 
largely  the  creation  of  the  means  by  which  to  carry 
out  the  programme  adopted  at  the  first  Congress. 

This  programme  having  declared  the  aim  of  Zionism 
to  be  the  establishment  for  the  Jewish  people  of  a 


80  ZIONISM  AND  WORLD  POLITICS 

publicly  recognized  and  legally  secured  home  in 
Palestine,  proceeded  to  specify  the  means  of  attaining 
this  aim  as  follows: 

1.  To  promote  through  effective  agencies  the  settle¬ 
ment  in  Palestine  of  Jewish  agriculturists,  artisans, 
and  tradesmen. 

2.  To  organize  and  unify  the  whole  Jewish  people 
by  means  of  local  and  general  institutions  suitable 
for  the  purpose  and  conforming  with  the  laws  of  the  re¬ 
spective  states. 

3.  To  strengthen  and  augment  Jewish  self-conscious¬ 
ness  in  the  individual  and  in  the  community. 

4.  To  take  the  proper  preliminary  steps  toward 
securing  the  concurrence  of  the  powers  insofar  as  their 
assent  may  be  necessary  for  the  attainment  of  the 
Zionist  goal. 

In  the  beginning  all  the  emphasis  was  laid  upon  the 
second  and  fourth  proposals.  Emphasis  on  the  second 
led  to  the  creation,  as  a  part  of  the  development  of  the 
organization,  of  the  fiscal  agencies  of  the  Movement. 
These  are  the  Jewish  Colonial  Trust  and  the  Jewish 
National  Fund.  The  former  was  the  actuality  of  the 
“Jewish  Company”  sketched  in  the  Judenstaat.  Its 
creation  was  not  merely  essential  as  a  pre-requisite 
to  the  work  of  colonization  in  Palestine;  it  was  essential 
to  the  establishment  of  a  sound  and  safe  basis  of  credit 
there,  without  which  new  agricultural  or  industrial 
communities  could  not  develop.  So,  by  vote  of  Con¬ 
gress,  the  Jewish  Colonial  Trust  was  incorporated,  as 
an  English  Joint  Stock  Company.  The  year  of  incor¬ 
poration  was  1899.  Its  projected  capital,  $10,000,000, 
was  to  be  provided  by  the  sale  of  2,000,000  shares  of 
stock  of  the  value  of  $5  each,  and  its  shareholders. 


AHAD  HA ’AM  AND  HERZL 


81 


over  one  hundred  thousand  in  number,  are  as  wide¬ 
spread  geographically  as  is  the  Jewish  people;  but 
they  have  paid  in  only  about  four  hundred  thousand 
dollars  of  the  ten  million.  The  first  hundred  of  the 
shares  are  called  Founders’  Shares;  they  carry  more 
voting  power  than  all  the  others,  but  pay  no  divi¬ 
dends  and  are  held  by  trustees  who  are  responsible  to 
the  Congress.  In  them  is  vested  the  directing  power 
of  the  Trust. 

The  trustees  are  also — with  the  freedom  of  their 
action  limited  in  this  connection  by  a  “controlling 
committee”  (identical  with  the  Inner  Actions  Com¬ 
mittee) — in  control  of  the  Jewish  National  Fund. 
(The  two  agencies  of  Zionist  fiscal  action  are  thus 
under  a  unified  control  and  administered  according  to  a 
single  policy.)  This  Fund  was  established  in  1901. 
Its  purpose  is  to  acquire  land  in  Palestine  as  the  in¬ 
alienable  possession  of  the  Jewish  people.  Its  moneys 
come  entirely  as  free-will  offerings  from  Jews  of  all 
lands.  The  use  is  decided  by  the  trustees,  who  com¬ 
pose  under  the  laws  of  Great  Britain  (which  chartered 
the  Fund)  an  association  issuing  no  stock.  Under 
the  charter  the  Fund  may  only  purchase  land  and 
other  immovable  property  in  Palestine  and  adjacent 
territory  for  the  purpose  of  settling  Jews  thereon:  It 
can  under  no  circumstance  “divest  itself  of  the  para¬ 
mount  ownership  of  any  of  the  soil  .  .  .  which 

it  may  from  time  to  time  acquire.”  Designed  at 
its  inception  to  accumulate  until  it  had  a  capital  of 
$1,000,000,  this  fund  has,  nevertheless,  since  the 
Sixth  Congress,  1903,  undertaken  a  good  many  pur¬ 
chases  and  other  enterprises  in  Palestine.  This  was 
due  to  a  compromise  decision  made  after  a  bitter 


82  ZIONISM  AND  WORLD  POLITICS 


quarrel,  between  the  “political”  and  the  “practical” 
parties  of  the  Congress,  and  a  part  of  the  compromise 
was  the  agreement  that  one  fourth  of  the  capital  of  the 
Fund  must  remain  an  inviolable  reserve,  against  the 
time  when  the  political  situation  might  demand  its  use. 

The  political  situation  was  in  many  ways  Herzl’s 
foremost  preoccupation.  His  quarrel  with  Hovevei 
Zion  derived  from  their  blindness  to  its  centrality 
and  to  the  importance  of  political  effort.  His  founda¬ 
tion  of  Die  Welt  was  at  bottom  motivated  by  it,  and 
so  long  as  he  lived  operations  in  Palestine  by  the 
Zionist  Organization  were  sharply  kept  within  bounds. 
He  visited  one  European  chancellery  after  another, 
making  friends  for  his  cause,  establishing  precedent 
and  priority  for  the  Zionist  Organization  as  the  rep¬ 
resentative  and  spokesman  of  the  Jewish  people. 
He  interviewed  the  Kaiser  and  the  Sultan,  the  premiers 
of  Russia  and  of  England.  With  England  he  estab¬ 
lished  a  connection  which  has  become  traditional  for 
good-will,  friendliness,  and  cooperation. 

His  opponents,  deriving  from  the  politically  inex¬ 
perienced  Ghettos  of  Russia,  could  neither  understand 
this  activity  nor  tolerate  it.  Their  devotion  to  Zion 
was  uttermost.  They  refused  to  endure  anything 
that  seemed  like  a  surrender  or  compromise  of  the 
prime  purpose  of  the  recovery  of  Palestine.  Conse¬ 
quently,  the  issue  between  them  and  Herzl  came  to  a 
crisis  in  1903,  at  the  Sixth  Congress.  The  background 
of  this  Congress  was  the  period  of  anti-Semitic  terror¬ 
ism,  of  pogrom  and  massacre,  initiated  by  the  Tsarist 
government  to  divert  public  attention  from  the  ad¬ 
ministrative  rottenness  which  had  been  responsible 
for  the  Russian  defeats  in  the  Russo-Japanese  War. 


83 


AHAD  HA ’AM  AND  HERZL 

The  towns  of  Kishineff  and  Gomel  had  been  devastated, 
many  Jewish  communities  laid  waste.  Herzl,  seeking 
relief  and  finding  Palestine — largely  because  of  the 
intransigent  attitude  of  Jewish  millionaires  who  were 
begged  to  and  might  easily  have  provided  the 
£10,000,000  demanded  by  Abdul  Hamid  for  a  conces¬ 
sion  in  Palestine — for  the  time  being  out  of  reach, 
negotiated  with  the  British  Government  and  secured 
the  famous  offer  of  Uganda.  Over  this  offer  the  Con¬ 
gress  split.  The  delegates  from  Russian  Jewry  bolted 
in  a  body.  Their  mandate  was  clear.  They  and  their 
constituencies  had  been  the  sufferers;  their  need  and 
their  tragedy  had  prompted  the  search  for  a  substitute 
for  Palest:ne.  But  they  would  accept  no  substitute. 
Their  ancestors  had  suffered  for  a  thousand  years; 
they,  too,  would  suffer.  They  would  suffer,  they  would 
endure.  No  matter  what  the  cost,  they  could  accept 
no  way-station,  no  nacht-asyl;  their  hope  and  their 
destiny  were  in  the  land  of  their  fathers  and  in  nothing 
else.  It  was  with  difficulty  that  Herzl  persuaded 
them  to  return  to  the  Congress.  The  British  offer 
was  not  refused  outright;  a  commission  was  appointed 
to  study  the  fitness  of  Uganda  for  colonization.  But 
the  report  of  the  commission  was  a  foregone  conclusion. 
Indeed,  to  make  assurance  doubly  sure  the  Russian 
Zionists  held  a  conference  at  Kharkov  which  formulated 
a  certain  ultimatum  to  put  before  Herzl.  That  he 
satisfied  the  representatives  of  the  Zionist  masses  may 
be  gathered  from  the  fact  that  the  meeting  of  the 
Actions  Committee  in  April,  1904,  gave  him  a  unanimous 
vote  of  confidence.  Three  months  later,  on  July  3rd, 
he  died  of  heart  failure.  He  was  only  forty -four  years 
old. 


CHAPTER  VIII 


PARTIES  AND  PROGRAMMES  AFTER  HERZL’s  DEATH 

THE  leader’s  death  seemed  at  first  a  blow  from  which 
the  Movement  could  not  recover.  There  were  enrolled 
in  it  no  personalities  with  the  same  force  and  imagina¬ 
tion,  none  with  any  sense  of  the  political  realities 
which  had  always  to  be  held  in  the  foreground  of 
Zionist  statesmanship.  The  more  influential  of  the 
western  Zionists,  to  whom  Zionism  was  far  more  a 
programme  of  relief  than  a  principle  of  creation,  dis¬ 
appointed  over  the  outcome  of  the  Uganda  affair,  se¬ 
ceded  from  the  movement,  with  Zangwill  at  their  head. 
They  formed  the  Jewish  Territorial  Organization  (Ito) 
which  for  a  while  bade  fair  to  rival  the  Zionist  associa¬ 
tion  in  influence  and  prestige.  But  the  Ito  was  a  lost 
cause  from  the  beginning.  It  counted  precisely  with¬ 
out  that  deep  emotion  and  overruling  vision  of  the 
masses  which  had  led  to  the  dramatic  rejection  of 
Uganda,  and  which  was  keeping  Zionism  alive  in 
spite  of  its  inadequate  leadership,  in  spite  of  the  fact 
that  with  Herzl  dead  the  movement  became  for  a  time 
a  movement  without  a  policy  and  without  a  plan,  in 
spite  of  the  fact  that  it  reverted  almost  instantaneously 
to  the  eleemosynary  attitude  and  methods  of  the  pre- 
Herzlian  times.  Not  that  the  “great  programme” 
was  forgotten;  there  were  simply  lacking  the  initiative 
and  the  imagination  to  carry  it  on.  David  Wolfsohn, 

84 


AFTER  HERZL’S  DEATH 


85 


Herzl’s  successor  as  chairman  of  the  Inner  Actions 
Committee,  was  devoted  to  Herzl  and  the  Herzlian 
programme,  but  he  lacked  the  essentials  of  leadership. 
By  vocation  he  was  a  banker,  with  distinguished  busi¬ 
ness  acumen,  infinite  caution,  and  unflinching  courage. 
He  lacked,  however,  the  qualities  to  advance  the  cause. 
The  best  he  could  do  was  to  keep  it  from  going  too 
far  backward,  to  surround  its  financial  agencies  with 
adequate  safeguards,  to  hold  the  factions  together 
and — to  mark  time.  In  the  end,  the  faction  which 
caused  the  defeat  of  the  Uganda  projects  defeated  him 
also,  and  he  also  died. 

That  faction  was  tied  to  ineffectuality  by  its  tradition 
of  “practical”  work  and  by  its  ardour  for  “cultural 
development.”  The  Inner  Actions  Committee  chosen 
to  express  it  was  truly  expressive  of  it — its  dominant 
figures  were  journalists,  lay  preachers,  and  at  best  a 
professor  of  botany.  Neither  it  nor  the  Congress 
which  elected  it  was  particularly  concerned  with  and 
certainly  not  skilled  in  the  problems  and  technique 
of  organization,  the  principles  of  financing,  or  any 
of  the  essentials  which  should  compose  an  effective 
engine  of  statesmanlike  endeavour.  Numerically,  the 
organization  went  backward  rather  than  forward — it 
lost  adherents  particularly  in  western  Europe  and 
America,  and  in  eastern  Europe  it  came  to  a  standstill. 
Attention  shifted  from  the  “great  programme”  to 
the  support  of  the  existing  Jewish  settlements  in 
Palestine  and  to  the  piecemeal  construction  of  new 
enterprises — more  especially  of  educational  enter¬ 
prises. 

This  was  accompanied  by  another  phenomenon  with 
which  it  was  causally  bound  up — the  development  and 


86 


ZIONISM  AND  WORLD  POLITICS 


stressing  of  party  differences  within  the  movement 
itself.  Under  the  “great  programme”  these  differences 
had  been  academic:  they  had  been  irrelevant  to  and 
did  not  in  any  way  affect  the  unity  of  purpose  and 
method  which  sought  to  secure  Palestine  once  more  as 
the  homeland  of  the  Jewish  people.  Rut  with  the 
initiation  of  specific  undertakings  these  differences  be¬ 
came  important  and  are  destined  to  play  a  progres¬ 
sively  greater  role  both  in  the  Zionist  Movement  and 
in  Palestine  itself. 

The  differences  echo  the  general  political  divisions 
of  European  society,  with  such  qualifications  as  the 
peculiarities  of  the  Jewish  people  impose.  Zionism 
thus  has  its  Centre,  Right,  and  Left,  and  the  quarrels 
that  usually  obtain  between  them.  “Centre”  may 
be  used  to  designate  what  has  often  been  called  the 
“general”  Zionist  group,  the  Zionists  who  are  con¬ 
cerned  primarily  and  exclusively  with  the  recovery 
of  the  Jewish  homeland  and  are  content  to  have  let  the 
correlative  and  subsidiary  problems  of  its  social  and 
political  economy  wait  public  promulgation  until  the 
time  comes  for  confronting  and  solving  them.  The 
overwhelming  majority  of  the  Zionists  are  “general.” 
They  elect  the  administrative  officers  and  sustain 
them  against  the  opposition.  That,  on  the  whole, 
and  perhaps  unfortunately,  has  made  very  few  encroach¬ 
ments  upon  the  Centre. 

In  most  respects  in  harmony  with  the  Centre, 
but  differing  from  it  in  essential  emphasis,  is  the 
Right.  Its  official  designation  is  “Mizrachi,”  and 
its  interest  is  the  conservation  and  enhancement  of 
traditional  Judaism.  It  sees  in  Zionism  and  in  the 
Jewish  homeland  simply  tools — indispensable  tools, 


AFTER  HERZL’S  DEATH 


87 


but  nevertheless,  tools  merely — for  the  attainment  of 
this  end.  Indeed,  it  sees  the  whole  complexus  of 
Jewish  life,  its  culture,  social  organization,  educational 
system  and  economy  as  secondary  to  this  sectarian 
interest.  The  Jews,  its  protagonists  hold,  are  a  people 
whose  chief,  whose  exclusive  attribute,  is  religion, 
and  religion  of  the  type  practised  and  defended  by  the 
Mizrachists.  For  justification  they  point  to  the  fact 
that  this  type  of  Judaism  is  the  Judaism  of  the  orthodox 
mass,  that  the  greater  part  of  the  history  of  this  mass 
is  religious  history.  From  the  Mizrachi  point  of  view 
the  Jewish  problem  is  the  maintenance  of  Judaism 
in  harmony  with  modern  life  and  society.  Says 
an  official  apologist,  quoting  from  the  declaration 
made  by  its  representatives  at  Pressburgin  1904:  “The 
Mizrachi  is  an  organization  of  orthodox  Jews,  who 
adhere  to  the  Basle  programme  and  who  strive  to  per¬ 
petuate  and  develop  the  national  Jewish  life  in  the 
spirit  of  Jewish  tradition.”  The  Mizrachi  believe, 
he  says  elsewhere,  44  that  Jewish  Nationalism  is  an 
essential  ingredient  to  the  existence  of  the  Jews  in  the 
present  and  the  future,  and  that  it  has  always  been 
an  inseparable  factor  in  Judaism,  and  that  the  Jewish 
religion  is  not  complete  without  it.  It  further  declares 
that  the  land  of  Israel,  Palestine,  is  the  land  of  the 
Jewish  future,  and  that  unless  it  is  obtained,  Jews  and 
Judaism  are  threatened  with  a  grave  danger.  Finally, 
it  asserts  that  those  two  can  obtain  the  ideal  state  only 
when  they  have  as  a  base  Torah  Israel,  the  true 
tradition  of  the  people.”  Organized  in  1903  by  Rabbi 
Jacob  Raines  of  Lida,  to  carry  out  these  principles, 
the  Mizrachists  have  devoted  themselves  to  propaganda 
among  the  “orthodox  mass”  and  to  the  development 


88  ZIONISM  AND  WORLD  POLITICS 


and  maintenance  of  traditionalist  educational  institutions 
in  Palestine.  In  view  of  their  proclaimed  unanimity 
with  the  orthodox  mass,  they  have  made  extraor¬ 
dinarily  little  progress  among  them.  The  party’s 
most  numerous  and  most  notable  recruits  have  come 
from  those  Jews,  both  east  and  west,  who  find  a  prob¬ 
lem  of  conscience  in  reconciling  orthodoxy  with  con¬ 
temporaneity.  The  Mizrachi  programme  and  point  of 
view  offer  a  solution.  But  they  are  a  programme 
and  point  of  view  altogether  without  meaning  to  the 
“orthodox  mass,”  which  is  at  rest  in  its  orthodoxy 
and  feels  no  problem.  Mizrachism  plays  the  same  role 
in  Judaism  as  Modernism  in  Catholicism,  and  is,  by 
every  probability,  destined  to  the  same  fate.  Mean¬ 
while,  it  goes  through  the  usual  party  exercises  of 
obstruction,  disingenuous  opposition,  demand  for  ex¬ 
cessive  representation.  In  Palestine  it  opposes  the 
secular  schools  and  demands  disproportionate  support 
for  its  own  and  other  orthodox  ones. 

The  Left  is  very  considerably  more  than  the  op¬ 
posite  of  the  Right.  Although  the  implications  of  the 
Right’s  position  should  lead  to  a  complete  split  in  the 
social  economy  of  life  also — Mizrachi  seeks  the  admin¬ 
istration  of  the  whole  “law  of  Israel”  and  “ultimate 
theocracy” — there  exists,  in  fact,  a  high  degree  of 
harmony  and  cooperation  between  Mizrachi  and  the 
“general”  Zionist  organization  on  all  matters  not 
relating  to  Mizrachi’s  particular  (demanded)  preroga¬ 
tives  in  organization  standing  and  in  Palestinian  work. 
But  the  Left  is  irreconcilable.  Its  position  is  exceed¬ 
ingly  subtle,  and  for  one  not  acquainted  with  the 
ethnic,  religious,  and  cultural  complications  of  central 
and  eastern  Europe,  difficult  to  grasp.  It  is  a  position 


AFTER  HERZL’S  DEATH 


89 


in  which  the  postulates  of  socialism  are  fused  with 
axioms  of  nationality.  Because  of  the  status  imposed 
upon  the  Jewish  people  by  the  accidents  of  history, 
the  Poale  Zion  (the  Left  is  usually  so-called — there 
are  other  forms  of  it — Zeiri  Zion,  Poel  Hazair,  etc.) 
hold,  the  Jewish  masses  are  more  absolutely  the  victims 
of  exploitation  than  any  other  in  Europe.  They  are 
exploited  not  merely  as  proletarians;  they  are  exploited 
also  as  Jews,  and  exploited  by  everybody,  by  their 
fellow  workmen  of  other  races  and  sects  as  well  as  by 
the  capitalists.  The  counter  to  economic  exploitation 
is  socialism.  The  counter  to  ethnic  disability  is  na¬ 
tionalism,  Zionism.  Hence  the  name  “Workers  of 
Zion,”  and  hence  the  organization  of  the  workers 
into  “class-conscious  national  units.”  Such  organiza¬ 
tion  is  imperative  for  the  adequate  solution  of  the  prob¬ 
lem  of  the  Jewish  masses.  The  capitalist  Jew  may 
and  usually  does  lose  his  identity  in  his  economic  class, 
or  at  most,  he  retains  his  connection  with  the  Jewish 
people  by  way  of  the  Church  and  tries  to  establish 
the  illusion  that  the  Jews  are  a  sect.  For  the  Jewish 
masses  such  a  moral  suicide  is  impossible,  and  they 
would  reject  it  as  unworthy  if  it  were  possible.  The 
cosmopolitanism  of  the  rigid  Marxian  socialist,  on  the 
other  hand,  though  much  assumed  and  defended  by 
many  Jews — the  lower  East  Side  of  New  York  is  full 
of  exclusively  Yiddish-speaking  “cosmopolitans”;  they 
really  compose  a  socialist  Ghetto — shows  itself  wherever 
logically  undertaken  to  be  only  a  “form  of  assimilation 
that  makes  of  the  Jewish  masses  a  pawn  in  the  hands 
of  ambitious  bourgeois.”  Consequently,  the  self- 
conscious  Jewish  workmen  are  not  merely  Socialists, 
they  are  also  Nationalists.  “With  the  Jewish  masses,” 


90  ZIONISM  AND  WORLD  POLITICS 


writes  Mr,  Fineman,1  “nationalism  means  self-assertion, 
contempt  for  servile  sufferance,  a  higher  cultural 
development;  and,  above  all,  a  determination  to  take 
one's  fate  in  one's  own  hand.  Cosmopolitanism  or 
assimilation  involves  surrender  of  individuality  and 
destruction  of  self-reliance  and  self-respect.  A  people 
that  is  humiliated  and  is  made  to  feel  that  its  own  speech 
and  culture  are  of  negligible  importance  is  one  that 
can  also  be  more  easily  exploited.  No  wonder  then 
that  with  minority  nationalities  the  wealthy  bourgeoisie 
and  the  exploiting  plutocrats  are  usually  in  favour  of 
assimilation  and,  on  the  other  hand,  class-conscious 
workingmen  more  or  less  clearly  recognize  that  prob¬ 
lems  of  cultural  autonomy  and  equality  of  national 
rights  are  of  primary  importance  to  the  working  class 
even  in  their  economic  struggle.”  The  concern  of  the 
Poale  Zionists,  consequently,  is  not  merely  with  the 
recovery  of  the  homeland  of  the  Jewish  people;  they 
are  as  integrally  concerned  with  the  economic  and 
cultural  character  that  this  homeland  is  to  have.  Where 
the  Mizrachi  stress  orthodox  Judaism,  they  stress 
Socialism.  But  they  differ  from  the  Mizrachi  in  the 
character  of  this  stressing.  To  the  Mizrachi  the  secur¬ 
ity  of  orthodoxy  is  the  paramount  end,  and  the  devices 
by  which  this  is  to  be  maintained  are  indifferent: 
any  polity  accomplishing  the  purpose  is  acceptable. 
To  Poale  Zionism  the  paramount  end  is  the  freedom 
and  happiness  of  the  Jewish  worker  as  Jewish  worker, 
and  the  polity  whereby  this  is  to  be  attained  is  implied 
by  it.  Hence  Poale  Zion  has  operated  everywhere — 
in  the  international  congresses,  in  the  various  national 
federations,  in  Palestine — as  a  genuine  opposition. 


1<4  Poale  Zionism,”  H.  Fineman,  New  York,  1918. 


AFTER  HERZL’S  DEATH 


91 


pressing  always  in  the  direction  of  economic  democracy. 
However  mistaken  its  economic  theories  may  be  held 
to  be,  its  practice  has  thus  far  been  exceedingly  salutary. 
It  has  had  the  courage,  also  the  foolhardiness  of  its 
position:  it  has  neither  bargained  nor  compromised. 
In  the  international  socialist  organization  it  has  con¬ 
sequently  become  the  acknowledged  representative 
of  the  Jewish  proletarian  and  it  has  secured  from  this 
organization  and  others  the  endorsement  of  the  Jewish 
claim  to  Palestine;  in  the  Zionist  organization  it  has 
acted  as  a  relentless  critic  of  the  policy  of  the  majority, 
more  often  with  heat  than  with  wisdom,  but  always  with 
unswerving  loyalty  to  its  dogmas.  It  is  in  Palestine, 
however,  that  its  influence  has  been  truly  salutary. 
There  it  helped  to  create  Hashomer,  the  force  of  mounted 
police  for  the  protection  of  the  colonies  which  has  as 
much  as  anything  else  served  to  win  the  regard  and 
respect  of  “Arabs”  for  Jews;  it  organized  the  Jewish 
workmen  against  exploitation  by  Jewish  landowners;  it 
defended  the  Jewish  National  Fund  against  abuse;  it 
established  a  Palestine  Labour  Fund  and  Bureau;  it 
organized  cooperative  societies  for  day  labourers  on  the 
Swedish  and  Italian  plans,  and  it  is  developing  and 
maintaining  various  cooperative  enterprises  recognized 
to  be  far  from  Socialism,  which  are  intended  to  safe¬ 
guard  the  Jewish  workman  in  Palestine  from  exploita¬ 
tion  on  the  one  side  and  pauperization  on  the  other. 


CHAPTER  IX 


THE  PRE-ZIONIST  JEWRY  OF  PALESTINE 

THE  Palestine  to  which  the  “general”  Zionists 
and  the  factions  turned  their  attention  was  anything 
but  the  ideal  which  the  tradition  had  made  of  it.  Such 
forests  as  it  had  possessed  had  been  cut  down;  its 
rivers  were  torrents  in  winter  and  rocky  aridities  in 
summer;  the  waters  that  had  been  distributed  by 
irrigation  ditches  were  puddled  in  swamps,  and,  for 
drinking  and  cooking,  collected  in  cisterns.  All  these 
had  become  breeding  grounds  of  malaria.  The  indi¬ 
genous  peasant  population,  victims  of  successive  waves 
of  military  conquerors,  each  of  which  had  left  a  racial 
sediment  in  its  wake,  existed  below  the  level  of  suste¬ 
nance  necessary  for  healthful  living.  It  was  wasted  by 
dirt  and  disease  (trachoma  and  malaria  outstandingly), 
retarded  by  ignorance  and  superstition,  and  impover¬ 
ished  by  taxes  and  the  exactions  of  public  officials. 
Its  numbers  were  slowly  decreasing;  the  equilibrium 
which  its  ancestry  had  succeeded  immemorially  long 
ago  in  establishing  with  its  natural  and  political 
setting  being  inadequate  for  increase  and  hardly 
sufficient  for  self-maintenance.  The  non-indigenous 
population  other  than  the  Jews  was  made  up  of  Chris¬ 
tian  sectaries  whose  existence  had  no  regard,  even 
when  they  were  self-supporting,  to  the  condition  of 
the  land  and  the  plight  of  their  neighbours;  their 

92 


THE  PRE-ZIONIST  JEWRY  93 

preoccupation  was  ultimately  with  heaven  and  salva¬ 
tion. 

The  same  thing  was  true  in  even  a  greater  degree  of 
the  Jews.  There  had  always  been  Jews  in  Palestine; 
indeed,  in  all  probability  the  indigenous  population 
is  to  a  great  degree  Jewish  by  blood,  though  no  longer 
by  nationality  and  consciousness.  The  conscious  Jews 
came  mostly  from  outside  of  Palestine  and  their 
primary  interest  in  the  land  was  in  the  merit  they 
acquired  by  living  in  it,  and  the  security  that  accrued 
to  them  by  dying  and  being  buried  in  it.  To  live  in 
the  Holy  Land  was,  in  their  eyes  and  in  the  eyes  of 
their  European  brethren,  itself  sanctification.  And  it  is 
of  the  very  nature  of  saintliness  that  it  must  not  concern 
itself  with  the  sordid  things  of  this  world,  such  as  the 
provision  of  food,  clothing,  shelter,  and  assurance  of  the 
future;  it  lays  up  treasure  in  heaven  and  lives  by 
charity  on  earth.  The  return  it  makes  for  what  it 
receives  it  makes  by  way  of  blessings  and  of  prayer, 
to  guarantee  prosperity  for  the  living  and  security 
for  the  dead. 

This,  since  the  middle  of  the  eighteenth  century,  was 
the  special  vocation  of  the  Jewish  inhabitants  of  Pales¬ 
tine.  They  were  concentrated  in  terrible  slums  of  the 
cities — Jerusalem,  Safed,  Tiberias.  They  studied  the 
Torah,  they  recited  psalms,  they  wept  and  prayed  at  the 
wailing  wall,  they  acted  as  official  mourners  and  Kaddish- 
sayers,  under  stipend,  for  the  pious  dead  and  preoc¬ 
cupied  living  in  lands  beyond.  Very  many  of  them 
were  old  people  who  had  themselves  made  pilgrimage 
*  to  Palestine  to  die,  but  lived — on  charity — and  bred. 
For  their  children  they  organized  the  typical  mediaeval 
chedarim  or  schools  and  the  Talmudical  academies 


94  ZIONISM  AND  WORLD  POLITICS 


called  Yeshibaks.  They  married  them  off — on  charity, 
and  when  they  finally  did  die,  they  left  them  for  in¬ 
heritance  their  claim  on  the  charitable  distribution 
which  had  attained  the  status  and  value  of  a  vested 
interest  and  proprietary  right.  The  charity  they 
lived  on  and  still  live  on  is  technically  known  as  Halukah. 
It  is  a  fund  collected  from  the  Jewries  of  the  whole  world 
to  maintain  the  pious  and  saintly,  whose  merit  it  is  to 
live  in  Palestine.  Its  administration  and  distribution 
participates  in  the  unsavoury  character  of  all  such  funds, 
and  its  existence  and  consequences  constituted  from 
the  beginning  one  of  the  most  vexatious  problems  of 
the  Jewish  secular  concern  with  Palestine. 

This  concern  became  direct  and  active  early  in  the 
nineteenth  century,  with  the  ritual-murder  accusation 
that  was  levelled  against  the  Jews  of  Damascus.  The 
accusation  brought  Sir  Moses  Montefiore  to  Palestine, 
and  in  1854  he  tried  to  colonize  thirty-five  Safed  Jews 
in  Galilee.  A  score  of  years  later,  as  one  result  of 
the  efforts  of  Hirsch  Kalischer,  the  colonies  of  Mosza 
and  Petach  Tikwah  were  founded  by  the  settlement 
in  those  places  of  Jews  from  Jerusalem.  To  these 
were  added  in  1882,  Rishon  le  Zion ,  Wadi-el-Hannin, 
Rosh  Pinnah ,  and  Zikron  Yaakob. 

With  the  foundation  of  Rishon  le  Zion  a  new  type 
of  Jew  enters  Palestine  and  the  land’s  rehabilitation 
truly  begins.  There  were  no  indications  of  this  what¬ 
soever  at  the  outset,  nor  for  a  generation  to  come. 
The  founders  of  Rishon  were  young  men,  intellectuals, 
most  of  them  tenderly  nurtured,  innocent  of  all  knowl¬ 
edge  of  agriculture,  with  neither  the  physique  nor  the 
force  to  undergo  the  hardships  of  pioneering.  They 
and  their  kindred  had  turned  to  Palestine  in  the  passion- 


THE  PRE-ZIONIST  JEWRY 


95 


ate  disillusion  over  liberation  in  Russia.  The  govern¬ 
ment  of  that  land,  under  the  Tsar  Liberator,  had  opened 
up  the  gates  of  intellectual  and  vocational  opportunity 
to  the  Jews.  The  younger  generation,  flocking  to  the 
universities,  adding  itself  to  the  intellectual  ferment 
of  all  young  Russia,  became  Russophile  and  “assimila- 
tionist,”  as  it  were,  over  night.  Then,  as  unexpectedly 
as  the  gates  had  been  opened,  they  were  shut  down. 
The  great  good  Tsar  was  killed.  His  successors  re¬ 
placed  his  liberal  ukases  with  the  May  Laws  of  1882. 
Pogroms  were  initiated  by  the  government  throughout 
the  Jewish  pale,  and  as  a  consequence  the  great  con¬ 
temporary  folk-migration  of  the  Jews  began.  The 
bulk  adventured  to  America,  there  to  build  up  the 
important  American  Jewish  community;  a  few,  a  very 
few,  reverting  to  the  old  ancestral  vision  of  the  Prom¬ 
ised  Land  and  moved  by  their  misfortunes  to  seek  a 
radical  solution  of  the  problem  of  which  their  misfortune 
was  so  intimate  and  poignant  an  expression,  adven¬ 
tured  to  Palestine.  What  distinguished  them  sharply 
and  utterly  from  the  older  communities  was  the  fact 
that  their  objective  was  secular  and  practical.  They 
were  not  going  to  Palestine  to  die,  they  were  going 
to  Palestine  to  live.  They  were  not  going  to  lay  up 
treasure  in  heaven,  they  were  going  to  win  a  livelihood 
from  the  earth.  In  their  consciousness  Palestine  had 
acquired  a  status  different  from  that  of  the  miraculous 
Messianic  tradition  and  other-worldly  hope  of  their 
predecessors.  Their  sentiment  toward  the  land  had 
a  greater  kinship  with  patriotism  than  with  piety. 
The  land  was  to  them  the  land  of  their  people’s  salva¬ 
tion,  even  as  it  was  to  the  religionists,  but  the  salvation 
was  to  be  secular,  through  work,  not  through  faith. 


96 


ZIONISM  AND  WORLD  POLITICS 


The  naive  and  unconsidered  affirmation  of  their 
inexperience  met  with  nullification,  however,  from 
two  directions.  At  hand  was  the  nudity  and  barren¬ 
ness  of  the  country,  changed  in  the  course  of  centuries 
of  maltreatment  from  “a  land  of  milk  and  honey’ ’ 
into  a  swamp-spotted,  disease-breeding  desert.  W7ith 
that  went  the  rapacity  of  the  landowners  who  sold 
them  land  in  all  sorts  of  impossible  places,  like  the 
marsh  in  which  Rishon  was  founded.  Farther  off,  in  the 
Jewries  of  the  world,  there  was  the  debilitating  effect 
of  the  tenderness  toward  any  Jew  who  lived  in  the 
Promised  Land.  Even  the  most  secular  of  the  Eu¬ 
ropean  Jewries  could  not  overcome  the  glamour  of 
the  vision  whose  fascination  increased  with  the  dis¬ 
tance;  could  not  overcome  the  sense  of  eleemosynary 
responsibility  for  the  pious  who  were  accumulating 
merit  by  merely  living  in  Palestine.  So,  when  the 
inevitable  happened,  when  the  aspiring  young  colo¬ 
nies  had  consumed  all  their  capital,  when  inexperience 
had  starved  them,  when  disease  had  weakened  them, 
and  death  and  flight  had  decimated  them  and  those 
that  remained  turned  at  last  to  their  brethren  in 
Europe,  the  Europeans  sprang  to  their  assistance. 

But  the  spirit  of  the  assistance  they  rendered  was 
essentially  charitable. 

They  failed  altogether  to  realize  the  principle  of  self- 
help  and  self-sufficiency.  In  the  east  a  conference 
was  organized  at  Kattowitz  which  later  was  trans¬ 
formed  into  the  Odessa  Committee.  In  the  west 
there  was  the  French  Rothschild,  moved  to  great 
largess  by  the  tales  of  the  sufferings  and  ardours  of  the 
colonists.  The  two  vied  with  each  other  in  errors  of 
method  and  material  wherewith  the  colonists  were  to  be 


THE  PRE-ZIONIST  JEWRY 


97 


relieved.  Little  by  little  the  colonists  became  demoral¬ 
ized.  The  first  ardour  died  out,  and  the  urgency  of  the 
struggle  to  survive  was  relaxed.  Under  the  interest 
and  providence  of  the  Rothschild1  fortune  the  colonists 
felt  that  they  were  secure.  They  ceased  to  work  with 
their  own  hands.  They  acquired  the  manners  and 
methods  of  the  Arab  effendi.  Their  homes  became  Arab 
villages.  If  a  crop  failed  or  money  otherwise  was  needed, 
it  came  to  them  in  the  guise  of  a  perpetual  loan;  or  the 
price  of  a  commodity  was  artificially  maintained — by 
means  of  the  Rothschild  millions — regardless  of  the 
market  and  the  other  conditions  controlling  production. 
Wine  that  could  not  be  marketed  was  stored  in  cellars 
built  for  the  purpose,  but  prices  were  maintained  and 
the  proceeds  used  in  sustaining  in  the  colonies  cheap 
imitations  of  the  style  and  manners  of  Paris. 

Withal,  the  “administrators”  who  represented  the 
Rothschild  interest  and  were  its  stewards,  were  either 
indifferent  to  the  development  of  the  settlement  or 
inimical  to  it.  They  made  all  the  errors  that  possibly 
could  be  made.  By  their  policy  they  added  a  colourful 
hatred  to  the  colonists’  colourful  life.  When,  in 
1891,  Ahad  Ha’am  visited  Palestine  for  the  Odessa 
Committee,  he  found  the  new  Yishub  living  on  a 
charity,  on  a  Halukah  more  subtly  distributed,  but  as 
genuinely  a  Halukah  as  the  sources  of  livelihood  of  the 
old  Yishub.  He  found  strained  relationships  between 
the  Jewish  settlement  and  the  Turkish  Government, 


1  It  is  proper  to  add  that  without  the  interest  of  Baron  Edmond  de  Roths¬ 
child,  this  aspect  of  the  Palestinian  adventure  would  have  failed  in  its  very  in¬ 
ception.  He  has  not  only  generously  maintained  it,  but  has  been  able  to 
profit  by  experience  so  that  to-day  he  and  his  son  James  de  Rothschild  are 
among  the  staunchest  supporters  of  a  realistic  policy  of  colonization  and  set¬ 
tlement  in  Palestine. 


98  ZIONISM  AND  WORLD  POLITICS 


strained  because  there  had  been  competition  and  specu¬ 
lation  in  the  purchase  of  lands  so  that  the  government 
had  found  it  necessary  to  prohibit  the  immigration 
of  and  the  sale  of  land  to  Russian  Jews.  He  found 
that  there  were  hardly  any  legalized  Jewish  holdings. 
He  found  the  law  of  baksheesh  regnant,  and  a  complexity 
of  devices,  all  involving  more  and  more  baksheesh ,  to 
hold  together  the  Jewish  colonist  and  the  land.  He  de¬ 
manded,  therefore,  that  the  approval  of  the  Turkish 
Government  should  be  secured  for  any  action  to  be 
taken  by  the  Odessa  Committee  and  he  urged  particu¬ 
larly  that  no  aid  should  be  given  the  colonists  in  the 
form  of  cash  advances. 

His  survey  and  his  recommendations  were  disagree¬ 
able  but  tonic.  They  designated  the  beginnings  of 
the  moral,  the  economic,  and  practical  rehabilitation 
in  self-help  and  self-respect  which  had  been  the  hope 
and  the  purpose  of  the  pioneers.  That  they  had  fallen 
into  the  easy  ways  of  a  kept  community  was  not  alto¬ 
gether  their  fault.  There  we  re  the  ponderous  inertia 
of  tradition,  the  inexperience,  and  the  incompetence; 
there  was  the  infection  of  example  from  the  older 
settlement  of  Halukah  Jews,  and  of  the  established 
order  of  society  in  the  land.  Talking  and  studying 
were  after  all  more  habitual,  more  traditional  to  them 
than  doing:  and  their  inward  drive  was  toward  these, 
not  toward  agricultural  or  industrial  competency. 
Lacking  the  external  compulsion  which  Would  have 
forced  them  to  achieve  the  latter,  they  spent  themselves, 
in  the  security  of  the  Rothschild  providence,  on  the 
former.  Like  the  old  Yishiib ,  they  concerned  them¬ 
selves  with  the  spirit,  but  it  was  a  secular  spirit  and 
its  substance  was  a  rehabilitated  Hebrew  vernacular. 


THE  PRE-ZIONIST  JEWRY  99 

a  Palestinian  Hebrew  Press,  and  a  system  of  education 
in  Hebrew. 

Its  process  and  prelude  was  a  cultural  revolution 
in  Palestine,  a  revolution  in  which  the  defenders  of 
tradition  persecuted,  denounced,  and  excommunicated. 
Its  leader  was  a  young  liberal,  Eliezer  Ben  Yehudah. 
Born  in  Russia  in  1859,  his  mind  was  formed  by  both 
the  forces  of  the  optimistic  Haskalah  and  of  the  pes¬ 
simism  which  made  all  the  young  Russians  that  were 
his  contemporaries  into  Nihilists.  The  upshot  of  his 
political  frustration  and  his  intellectual  disillusion 
was,  as  it  was  for  so  many  of  his  peers,  the  redis¬ 
covery  of  his  place  among  his  people,  and  a  self¬ 
dedication  to  the  regeneration  of  the  one  enduring 
specific  symbol  of  his  people’s  entity — the  Hebrew 
tongue.  He  went  from  Russia  to  Paris,  from  Paris 
to  Palestine.  Facing  death  from  tuberculosis  and 
starvation,  he  lived  in  an  underground  hovel  in  Jeru¬ 
salem,  the  objective  of  all  the  rancour  that  orthodoxy 
could  concentrate  upon  him.  In  his  hovel,  the  only 
speech  he  permitted  to  be  used  was  Hebrew  speech.  He 
refused  to  speak  any  other  language  upon  the  public 
streets.  By  force  of  his  example,  and  the  advocacy 
of  the  cause  in  a  Hebrew  weekly  of  which  he  made 
himself  editor,  he  acquired  a  following.  His  following 
also  pledged  themselves  to  use  only  Hebrew  in  their 
households.  Their  children  grew  up  in  a  Hebrew¬ 
speaking  setting.  They  were  sent  to  kindergartens 
and  schools — such  as  they  were — specially  provided, 
where  Hebrew  alone  was  the  language  of  play  and  of 
work. 

And  the  Hebraization  of  the  children  reacted  again 
upon  the  parents.  Slowly,  life  in  the  new  Yishub 


100  ZIONISM  AND  WORLD  POLITICS 


became  Hebraic.  A  literature  and  a  drama  grew  up, 
as  it  were  over  night.  In  the  colonies,  the  traditional 
holidays  became  spontaneously  occasions  for  games, 
festivals,  and  pageants,  the  latter  recapitulating  various 
phases  of  the  biblical  narratives.  To  regulate  and  to 
guide  the  vernacular  and  literary  development  of 
Hebrew  there  was  organized  in  Jerusalem  the  Va’ad 
Halashon ,  with  Ben  Yehudah  as  its  head.  This  Va’ad 
had  the  nature  and  functions  of  Richelieu’s  first 
Academy.  It  was  the  court  of  language.  All  new 
forms,  spontaneous  or  manufactured,  were  brought  to 
it  for  confirmation  or  rejection.  It  set  itself  the 
task  and  purpose  of  providing  expressions  needful 
to  the  daily  as  well  as  the  literary  life,  and  not  to  be 
found  in  the  existing  vocabulary.  To  accomplish 
its  task  it  drew  upon  all  sources — archaeological  and 
Talmudical  material,  the  Bible,  the  Hebrew  literature 
of  the  Middle  Ages.  Its  results  are  being  incorporated 
by  Ben  Yehudah  with  the  outcome  of  his  own  private 
labours  in  his  Millon ,  or  Hebrew  dictionary. 

This  spontaneous  linguistic  and  cultural  develop¬ 
ment  of  the  new  Yishub  was  by  no  means  a  smooth 
one.  That  the  Hebraic  movement  was  resisted  by 
the  older  and  spiritually  mediaeval  settlement  has 
already  been  noted.  An  attempt  on  the  part  of  a 
section  of  this  settlement,  made  in  1866,  to  establish 
a  school  (the  Blumenthal  School)  where  the  manage¬ 
ment  was  competent  and  where  the  study  of  one 
European  language  was  compulsory,  met  with  ex- 
communication  on  the  part  of  the  Ashkenazic  section 
of  that  community.  The  first  real  and  effective  at¬ 
tempt  from  outside  to  bring  something  of  the  spirit 
of  self-help  and  national  self-respect  to  the  Jewish  com- 


THE  PRE-ZIONIST  JEWRY 


101 


munities  of  Palestine  was  made  by  the  Alliance  Israelite 
Universelle  under  the  leadership  and  personal  initiative 
of  the  saintly  Charles  Netter.  In  1870  he  founded 
near  Jaffa  the  Mikweh  Israel — an  agricultural  school, 
on  the  most  approved  model  of  the  time.  His  super¬ 
vision  lasted  until  his  death,  in  1882.  With  the  passing 
of  his  personality  and  the  change  in  temper  of  the 
directorate,  a  change  that  reflected  the  political  changes 
in  the  Europe  of  the  time,  the  effect  and  the  policy 
of  Mikweh  Israel  as  well  as  of  the  other  Alliance 
schools  in  the  Orient  were  altered.  Designed  to  convert 
the  Halukah-receiving  population  into  self-supporting 
and  self-respecting  agricultural  labourers — and  during 
the  period  of  Netter’s  leadership,  labourers  with  a 
vision  of  national  restoration  before  them — its  actual 
effect,  like  that  of  all  the  Alliance  schools,  was  to  make 
of  the  pupils  amateur  Frenchmen,  agricultural  ad¬ 
ministrators,  book-made  experts,  or  teachers  eager  to 
find,  and  eagerly  seeking,  life  and  vocation  elsewhere 
than  in  Palestine.  The  policy  of  the  Alliance  was  to 
cross  and  to  frustrate,  as  nearly  as  it  could,  the  spon¬ 
taneous  tendencies  of  the  new  settlement  and  to 
obstruct  its  influence  upon  the  old.  That  it  should 
fail  was  a  foregone  conclusion.  All  it  accomplished 
was  to  lend  prestige  to  those  tendencies — to  the  use 
of  European  methods  of  education,  of  management, 
and  to  training  for  industry.  It  had  its  competitors 
in  England  and  in  Germany,  who  endowed  schools 
with  analogous  purposes  and  with  analogous  futility. 
Colony  after  colony  succeeded  in  establishing  inde¬ 
pendently  its  own  school  and  its  Hebrew  medium. 
Not  easily  and  not  without  conflict.  In  1888  Israel 
Belkind  tried  to  found  a  national  school  at  Jaffa, 


102  ZIONISM  AND  WORLD  POLITICS 


but  failed  for  lack  of  funds.  In  the  agricultural  colonies 
this  lack  was  met  by  the  Rothschild  money,  distributed 
by  the  Jewish  Colonization  Association  (J.  C.  A.) 

This  association,  which  is  trustee  for  the  Baron 
Maurice  de  Hirsch  Foundation,  had  been  made  trustee, 
in  1899,  of  the  Rothschild  assets  and  liabilities  in  the 
Jewish  colonies  of  Palestine.  Its  charge  was  to  bring 
order  and  self-dependence  out  of  the  confusion  and 
pauperism  that  prevailed  in  the  Rothschild  colonies. 
Although  it  has  been  accused  of  absentee  landlordism 
and  bureaucracy,  it  certainly  did  attain  to  something 
which  may  be  called  success  in  comparison  with  the 
utter  failure  of  Rothschild  and  the  Odessa  Committee 
and  the  independent  pioneers.  To  some  degree  and 
after  a  fashion,  it  rehabilitated  the  economics  and 
administration  of  the  colonies.  Refusing  resolutely 
to  interfere  with  the  cultural  interests  of  the  Yishub, 
it  devoted  itself  to  recreating  the  economic  indepen¬ 
dence  which  had  been  lost.  It  uprooted  vineyards, 
cut  down  the  output  of  wine,  withdrew  the  Rothschild 
subsidy  which  had  kept  prices  at  a  level  of  extraordi¬ 
nary  inflation,  and  compelled  the  wine-growers  to  offer 
their  wine  in  open  market  to  bona-fide  buyers.  At 
the  same  time  it  arranged  to  see  the  colonists  through 
their  crises  on  more  of  a  business  and  less  of  a  philan¬ 
thropic  basis.  This  it  did  by  a  system  of  guaranteed 
loans  with  specific,  though  varying,  terms,  secured 
by  mortgages,  and  replacing  the  unguaranteed  loans 
that  were  really  gifts.  The  necessities  of  the  situation 
and  the  pressure  of  the  J.  C.  A.  forced  the  wine-growers 
of  the  six  viticultural  colonies  into  cooperative  organ¬ 
ization  for  both  buying  and  selling.  Within  ten  years 
they  succeeded  in  making  their  affairs  profitable  enough 


THE  PRE-ZIONIST  JEWRY  103 

to  begin  to  discharge  their  debts  and  to  pay  off  their 
mortgages. 

The  method  had  been  used  by  the  Jewish  Coloniza¬ 
tion  Association  in  the  Argentine  and  in  the  establish¬ 
ment  of  its  own  colonies  in  Galilee.  There  it  set  up 
farms,  for  the  training  of  agriculturalists,  each  under 
the  direction  of  an  expert  supervisor.  Around  these 
farms  it  built  its  colonies,  consisting  of  allotments  of 
land,  houses,  stock,  and  tools,  to  be  leased  to  each  work¬ 
man  whose  training  had  made  him  eligible  for  an 
allotment.  His  terms  were  of  the  easiest:  the  pay¬ 
ment  of  a  rent,  at  first  in  kind,  of  about  one  fifth 
his  gross  produce;  then,  if  both  sides  were  willing  and 
satisfied  with  each  other,  a  contract  under  which  the 
colonist  was  to  pay  off  the  cost  of  his  farm  and  equip¬ 
ment  (varying  in  price  from  $2,200  to  $3,500)  in  about 
fifty-one  years,  at  the  rate  of  2  per  cent,  per  year.  Es¬ 
sentially  philanthropic  though  this  is,  it  is  an  enor¬ 
mous  improvement  over  the  earlier  pauperizing  methods. 

That  the  readjustments  which  the  methods  of  the 
Jewish  Colonization  Association  compelled  should 
work  hardship;  that  the  colonists,  already  pauperized 
in  spirit,  did  not  like  them  and  should  complain  bit¬ 
terly,  were  foregone  conclusions.  It  was  not  a  foregone 
conclusion  that  the  Association  should  succeed.  For 
its  success  was  dependent  upon  a  radical  change,  a 
change  equivalent  to  a  religious  conversion,  in  the 
psychology  of  the  colonists.  This  change  neither  the 
Association  nor  any  other  force  active  in  Palestine 
could  have  brought  about.  It  derived,  when  like  a 
rocket  it  flashed  up,  from  a  new  and  entirely  extraneous 
influence,  supplying  a  new  and  efficacious  morale,  a  new 
dynamic  and  a  new  vision.  The  influence  was  Zionism. 


CHAPTER  X 


ZIONISM  IN  PALESTINE  AND  THE  NEAR-EASTERN  QUESTION 

THE  reaction  of  Palestinian  Jewry  to  Zionism  and 
the  Zionist  principle  could  not,  at  the  beginning,  fail 
to  conform  to  the  wont  and  use  of  their  daily  lives. 
These,  in  their  bearing  on  the  economy  and  polity  of 
Palestine,  had  the  blindness  of  instinct  or  the  illusion 
of  religion.  At  no  point  were  they  illuminated  by  an 
organic  principle  that  should  govern  the  policies  of 
the  community  and  give  conscious  direction  to  its 
life.  The  orthodox,  the  Messianists,  in  Palestine 
responded  to  Zionism  with  the  same  pious  repulsion 
as  their  fellow-pietists  elsewhere;  the  pan-Turanians* 
of  whom  there  were  some,  echoed  the  German  and 
French  assimilationists,  and  among  the  members  of 
the  new  Yishub  there  was  the  same  dubious  assent  as 
among  the  Hovevei  Zionists  who  were  their  chief 
bread-givers. 

Moreover,  the  first  position  and  prior  policy  of  the 
Zionist  organization  under  Herzl’s  leadership  were  in¬ 
different  to  their  interests.  The  position  was  that  no 
enterprises  should  be  undertaken  in  Palestine  except 
under  the  guarantee  of  a  charter  which  would  make 
possible  autonomous  control  and  organic  national 
development.  The  policy  was  to  create  the  instru¬ 
ments  for  such  a  development  and  to  withhold  their 
utilization  until  the  political  guarantee  had  been 

104 


THE  NEAR-EASTERN  QUESTION  105 

secured.  Under  Herzl,  the  Zionist  organization,  con- 
4  sequently,  devoted  itself  to  building  up  its  membership 
and  institutions  and  to  carrying  on  diplomatic  and 
political  negotiations  with  the  chancellaries  of  Europe. 
The  Russian  Hovevei  Zionists,  who — with  notable  ex¬ 
ceptions  such  as  Ahad  Ha’ am — had  joined  the  move¬ 
ment,  opposed  the  position  and  the  policy  bitterly; 
offering  as  alternative  the  elaboration  and  continuance 
of  their  own  programme,  now  translumined  by  the 
Herzlian  purpose  as  its  goal.  Between  them  and 
Herzl  and  his  followers  there  was  continual  strife, 
and  all  the  parties  in  Zion  were  defined,  according  to 
their  adherence,  as  “practicals”  or  “ politicals.” 

From  the  point  of  view  of  the  “politicals”  the  posi¬ 
tion  of  the  Jewish  colonists  in  Palestine  was  precarious 
in  the  extreme.  Under  Turkish  law  they  had  no  right 
to  the  land  they  held;  indeed,  their  holdings  were  either 
unrecorded,  or  recorded  in  the  name  of  some  Arab  or 
Turk;  they  themselves  were  without  legal  claim  on  it. 
To  retain  it,  and  to  maintain  their  status,  they  were 
under  the  compulsion  of  the  frequent  and  extensive 
use  of  baksheesh ,  and  at  the  mercy  of  the  caprice  of 
every  official.  Jews,  furthermore,  could  enter  Turkish 
territory,  particularly  Palestine,  only  under  difficulties, 
and  their  stay  was  formally  illegal.  By  the  regulations 
of  the  Porte,  made  in  1888,  Jews  seeking  to  enter 
Palestine  were  required  to  secure  a  “red  ticket”  and 
once  in,  could  stay  only  three  months.  The  regula¬ 
tions  were  a  dead  letter  from  the  moment  of  their 
promulgation,  baksheesh  and  the  general  feeling  of  their 
insincerity  helping  to  make  them  so.  But  they  kept 
dubious  the  whole  position  of  the  Jewish  settlement 
of  Palestine  and  it  was  with  an  eye  on  them  that  Ahad 


106  ZIONISM  AND  WORLD  POLITICS 


Ha’am  made  the  recommendations  of  1891.  In  1900, 
when  it  began  to  be  apparent  that  little  would  come 
of  the  negotiations  between  Herzl  and  Abdul  Hamid, 
the  Vali  of  Beirut  was  again  instructed  to  enforce  the 
regulations,  apparently  in  the  hope  that  such  an 
action  might  force  the  hands  of  the  rich  Jews,  regarding 
whose  riches  and  desire  for  Palestine  Abdul  Hamid 
had  mythical  ideas.  Had  the  instructions  been  obeyed, 
the  whole  Yishub  would  have  been  destroyed.  Italy 
and  the  United  States  protested,  however,  that  en¬ 
forcement  would  mean  discrimination  against  their 
nationals  on  the  basis  of  religion,  and  the  Turks  re¬ 
frained,  reverting  to  the  older  practice.  The  event, 
of  course,  was  a  concrete  illustration  of  the  considera¬ 
tion  that  animated  the  “politicals,”  and  there  were 
some  Palestinians  who  understood  them,  and  sided 
with  them. 

In  any  case,  that  the  Palestinians’  hopes  were  stirred 
and  their  vision  enlarged  is  indisputable.  They  were 
always  represented  at  the  congresses,  and  Herzl’s 
visit  to  Palestine  produced  a  marked  and  lasting  inten¬ 
sification  of  their  nationalist  morale.  The  negotiations 
over  El  Arish  and  Uganda,  which  succeeded  the  negotia¬ 
tions  with  the  Turk,  served  to  intensify  it  still  further, 
and  it  was  suffused  with  something  like  anti-Zionist 
feeling  during  the  sessions  of  the  Sixth  Zionist  Congress 
when  the  British  offer  was  being  debated.  The  occa¬ 
sion  was  not  the  Congress  itself,  but  another  congress 
in  Palestine,  organized  and  presided  over  by  Mendel 
Ussishkin.  Sanguine  in  temperament  and  dictatorial 
in  his  contacts  with  other  men,  he  had  qualities  that 
fitted  him  for  leadership  under  the  conditions  of  re¬ 
stricted  public  life  in  Russia,  but  which  were  entirely 


THE  NEAR-EASTERN  QUESTION  107 

unsuited  to  the  open  methods  and  public  deliberations 
of  parliamentary  procedure.  Although  a  member  of 
the  Zionist  organization  and  conspicuous  by  his  be¬ 
haviour  rather  than  by  his  ideas  at  the  congresses,  he 
was  an  intransigent  Hovevei  Zionist  and  he  opposed 
Herzl  and  the  “politicals”  from  the  start.  His  meth¬ 
ods  were  rather  those  of  Tsarist  Russia  than  of  parlia¬ 
mentary  England,  and  the  congress  that  he  created  in 
Palestine  was  his  first  reply  to  the  Uganda  offer.  It 
proposed  an  organization  of  the  philanthropic  agencies 
functioning  in  Palestine — of  the  Jewish  Colonization 
Association,  the  Odessa  Committee,  the  Alliance 
Israelite,  the  Ezra  (a  German  society)  and  represen¬ 
tatives  of  Baron  Edmond  de  Rothschild,  who,  together 
with  the  Yishub  through  its  chosen  spokesmen,  should 
collaborate  “practically”  to  the  end  of  colonizing 
Palestine  with  Jews.  The  enterprise  failed,  and  in 
the  meantime  Herzl  had  died,  and  the  Seventh  Congress 
had  with  dignity  and  appreciation  declined  the  British 
offer. 

This  action  was  a  victory  for  the  “practicalists.” 
It  closed  a  phase  of  Zionist  activity.  All  subsequent 
action,  economic,  social,  and  cultural,  centred  about 
Palestine  and  the  communities  there.  The  first  step 
was  taken  in  the  year  of  the  Sixth  Congress,  when  the 
Jewish  Colonial  Trust  organized  the  Anglo-Palestine 
Company  bank  in  Jaffa.  Other  branches  appeared, 
in  the  course  of  time  in  Jerusalem,  Beirut,  Haifa,  Safed, 
Tiberias,  Hebron,  Gaza,  and  Petah  Tikwah.  Their 
ultimate  purpose,  their  economic  liberalism,  and  their 
— in  comparison  of  course  only  with  what  had  obtained 
in  the  past — apparently  businesslike  methods  created  a 
new  industrial  and  commercial  standard  for  the  Yishub, 


108  ZIONISM  AND  WORLD  POLITICS 


a  standard  suffused  with  something  of  the  high  morale 
of  the  national  idea. 

The  function  of  these  banks  was  reenforced  in  1911 
by  the  institution  of  the  Palestine  Commission.  In 
that  year  Wolfsohn,  who  had  succeeded  to  the  post 
and  the  policies  of  Herzl,  went  down  to  defeat.  The 
“  practicalists  ”  became  the  government  of  the  Zionist 
organization,  with  a  policy  that  just  barely  kept  them 
from  going  over  the  edge  of  Zionism  to  an  absolute 
philanthropism.  This  was,  in  the  imagination  of  its 
apologists,  an  extension  of  the  general  policy  of  Europe 
abroad,  to  the  sphere  of  Jewish  interests.  It  was  “the 
policy  of  economic  penetration.”  The  Jewish  claim 
to  Palestine  on  merely  historic  grounds,  argued  Otto 
Warburg,  a  professor  of  botany  in  Berlin  and  the 
leader  and  promulgator  of  the  new  programme,  was 
not  worth  much,  nowadays.  A  valid  modern  title 
would  have  to  rest  on  the  economic  dependence  of 
Palestine  upon  Jewish  investment,  initiative,  and 
resources.  The  Palestine  Office  or  Bureau  was  created 
pursuant  to  this  idea.  It  purported  to  function  prac¬ 
tically  as  a  home  ministry,  collecting  information, 
guiding  and  assisting  would-be  settlers,  and  directing 
and  coordinating  all  sorts  of  activities.  Certain 
moneys  of  the  National  Fund  were,  not  without  a 
struggle,  made  available  for  its  activities.  It  guided 
and  to  some  degree  subsidized  experiments — which 
were  wasteful  failure — in  afforestation;  in  cooperative 
colonization,  notably  the  costly  and  unsuccessful 
Merchaviah  experiment  according  to  the  plans  of  Franz 
Oppenheimer.  It  undertook  housing  experiments,  the 
care  of  the  Yemenites,  the  encouragement  of  the  art 
school,  Bezalel,  and  its  shops,  of  the  Hebrew  Gym- 


THE  NEAR-EASTERN  QUESTION  109 

nasium  at  Jaffa,  of  the  Technical  School  at  Haifa, 
and  the  Hebrew  University,  projected  already  before 
the  war — all  with  the  enormous  wastage  which  is  the 
price  of  inexperience  or  something  more  sinister. 

The  dominating  interest,  naturally,  was  “cultural 
work”  in  Palestine.  Three  at  least  of  the  members 
of  the  Inner  Actions  Committee  were  avowed  disciples 
of  Ahad  Ha’ am.  All  felt  the  pressure  of  the  Zionist 
intellectuals  toward  cultural  revival.  The  exceeding 
emphasis  on  the  school  system,  then,  was  a  part  of 
the  party  programme,  but  it  represented,  as  has  already 
been  noted,  the  natural  institutional  trend  of  the  effec¬ 
tive  will  of  the  Jewish  people,  this  will  having  become 
accustomed  to  expressing  itself  in  schools  and  litera¬ 
ture,  and  having  still  much  training  to  undergo  before 
it  may  be  able  to  realize  itself  in  organically  conceived 
national  economic  and  political  institutions.  Toward 
that  latter  end  also,  however,  first  and  tentative  steps 
had  been  taken  in  the  development  of  cooperative 
consumers  and  marketing  associations  among  the  older 
colonists,  and  the  growth  and  functioning  of  the 
vciadim,  or  councils,  with  their  occasional  equal 
suffrage  and  commission  form  of  administration.  The 
chief  instrument  of  the  Zionist  organization  in  helping 
toward  all  these  developments  was  the  Palestine  Office, 
somehow  directed  by  a  sociological  writer.  Dr.  Arthur 
Ruppin. 

In  sum:  under  the  new  Zionist  policy,  the  impact 
of  the  Zionist  idea  on  Palestine  served  to  awaken  and 
to  direct  the  anarchic  Jewry  of  the  land  into  a  com¬ 
munity  tending  to  acquire  the  characteristics  of  a 
national  polity.  Compared  with  even  the  inchoate 
Albanians,  the  spirit  of  this  community  was  still 


110  ZIONISM  AND  WORLD  POLITICS 


atomic  and  centrifugal,  but  beside  its  antecedents  in 
Palestianian  Jewry  itself  it  was  corporate  and  organic 
indeed.  Any  enmity,  menacing  vigorously  enough 
from  without,  would  fuse  its  disparate  organizations 
into  institutions  of  its  society  and  its  consciousness 
of  nationality  into  the  patriotism  of  nationhood. 

The  lacking  inimical  menace  was  supplied  by  the 
action  of  European  rivalries  on  the  Turkish  Empire. 
These  rivalries  had  kept  alive  the  “Sick  Man”  of 
Europe,  even  through  crises  in  his  own  existence.  The 
conflicting  ambitions  of  Austria-Hungary  and  Russia 
in  the  Balkans,  the  British  anxiety  over  the  Syrian 
road  to  India  and  the  protection  of  the  Suez  Canal, 
the  French  investments  in  Syria,  and  the  crystalliza¬ 
tion  of  the  German  programme  of  a  Middle  Europe, 
were  cleverly  used  by  Abdul  Hamid  one  against  the 
other  to  keep  himself  safe  amid  atrocities.  The 
latter  were  as  essential  a  part  of  his  domestic  policy 
as  the  former  were  of  his  foreign  policy.  For  the 
Turkish  Empire  was  a  polyglot  empire,  and  the  Turks 
were  a  minority  in  their  own  dominion.  Heirs  of 
the  imperial  structure  of  Byzantium,  they  allowed 
its  common  life  to  run  on  of  its  own  momentum — 
until  it  ran  down — and  trusted  their  sovereignty 
to  the  sanction  of  the  military  force  of  the  Janissaries. 
But  these  themselves  lost  integrity  in  the  course  of 
time.  Posts  became  hereditary,  and  discipline  and 
ferocity  were  replaced  by  intrigue  and  baksheesh. 
The  peoples  that  were  dominated  and  exploited  by 
these  forces  were  designated  as  millets ,  that  is,  religious 
nationalities,  having  their  own  leaders,  with  powers 
and  functions  that  were  secular  as  well  as  religious. 
Thus  the  Christians  of  Turkey  in  Europe  were  con- 


THE  NEAR-EASTERN  QUESTION  111 

sidered  all  of  the  Greek  millet,  regardless  of  whether 
they  were  Bulgars  or  Serbs,  or  Croats,  or  Vlachs,  or 
Greeks  proper. 

It  would  perhaps  have  been  fortunate  for  Europe 
if  this  mode  of  unity  had  remained  the  dominant 
one,  and  the  liberation  of  these  nationalities  from  the 
Turkish  yoke  had  been  the  common  action  of  a  group 
regarding  itself  one  and  indivisible.  Rut  the  pressure 
of  the  continental  rivals  prohibited  this,  and  the  auto¬ 
genous  interests  of  the  linguistic  and  ethnographic 
societies  were  reenforced  and  were  exploited  by  the 
continental  powers.  The  slow  expulsion  of  the  Turk 
from  Europe  is  a  function  not  primarily  of  the  single 
religious,  but  of  the  many  awakening  national  con¬ 
sciousnesses  of  the  various  subject-peoples  of  the 
Porte.  Greek  and  Serb  and  Croat  and  Bulgar  and 
Ruman,  by  force  or  fraud  or  both,  attained  first  to 
autonomy,  then  to  independence,  under  the  stimula¬ 
tion  of  linguistic  and  literary  revival  at  home  and  dip¬ 
lomatic  intrigue  and  military  force  abroad.  It  became 
apparent,  finally,  that  Turkey-in-Europe  was  doomed. 

It  became  apparent,  to  none  so  much  so,  as  to  the 
subjects  of  the  Porte  who  called  themselves  Young 
Turks,  and  who  hoped  to  save  the  empire  from  the 
dissolution  within  and  the  destruction  without,  which 
threatened  it.  The  Committee  of  Union  and  Prog¬ 
ress  that  led  them  was  recruited  from  a  variety  of 
the  races  of  the  empire:  Donmeh  Jews  from  Saloniki, 
Bulgars,  Poles.  Most  of  its  members  had  lived  in 
exile  abroad.  They  had  been  students  of  European 
politics  and  European  political  theories.  They  had 
been  particularly  intrigued  by  the  ideology  of  the 
French  Revolution,  and  at  the  outset,  it  would  seem. 


112  ZIONISM  AND  WORLD  POLITICS 


they  took  this  ideology  literally,  abstractly.  Their 
one  aspiration  was  to  modernize  Turkey,  to  democra¬ 
tize  and  vitalize  her.  This  aspiration  fitted  the  in¬ 
terests  of  certain  financiers  in  Saloniki  and  of  others, 
far  more  important,  in  Vienna,  Ruda-Pesth,  Berlin, 
and  very  probably,  Paris  and  London.  With  the 
means  supplied,  in  return  for  pledges  of  concessions 
by  these  financiers,  the  Young  Turks  conspired  to  over¬ 
throw  the  government.  In  1908  they  did  overthrow 
the  government,  but  their  revolution  was  the  coup  d’etat 
of  a  minority,  not  a  great  national  uprising.  For  the 
latter  the  necessary  elements  were  lacking.  The  re¬ 
ligious  sanctity  of  the  Sultan  was  too  great;  the  popu¬ 
lations  were  too  diverse,  too  backward,  too  little  in¬ 
terested  in  government. 

At  the  outset  there  spread  the  general  spirit  of 
good  feeling  and  hopefulness  which  accompanies 
vital  changes  everywhere.  The  Constitution  pro¬ 
claimed  religious  and  political  equality,  universal 
suffrage  was  introduced,  and  a  parliament  convoked. 
The  more  progressive  parts  of  the  population  were 
filled  with  hope.  But  it  soon  became  apparent  that 
the  abstractionist  principles  of  the  eighteenth  century 
on  which  the  Constitution  was  built  were  inapplicable 
to  the  mediaeval  status  and  mentality  of  the  popula¬ 
tion  of  the  empire.  The  Albanians,  and  then  the 
other  nationalities  began  to  make  difficulties.  The 
levelling  effect  of  the  rule  of  universal  military  service 
was  resented  by  Jews,  Druses,  Arabs,  and  others  who 
had  been  accustomed  to  relieve  themselves  of  the  obli¬ 
gations  of  this  service  by  paying  a  head-tax.  The  at¬ 
tempt  to  introduce  a  uniform  system  of  taxation  met 
with  similar  resentment.  Other  troubles  eventuated. 


THE  NEAR-EASTERN  QUESTION  113 

Just  how  they  converted  the  Young  Turkish  ab¬ 
stractionist  libertarianism  into  what  the  Germans 
call  “realistic”  pan-Turanianism  it  is  difficult  to  say. 
The  Austrian  seizure,  in  1908,  of  the  Jugo-Slavic 
territories  of  Bosnia  and  Herzegovina  had  a  great  deal 
to  do  with  it;  so  had  the  attainment  of  complete  Bul¬ 
garian  independence;  so  had  the  Italian  adventure 
in  Tripoli,  and  the  Greek  rebellion  in  Crete.  All 
these  enterprises  served  well  and  nobly  to  awaken 
the  Young  Turks  to  the  political  realities  of  the  situa¬ 
tion  of  their  empire.  They  saw  the  Balkans  slowly 
Europeanized,  their  own  people  more  and  more  forced 
back  into  Asia.  They  saw  themselves  without  any 
real  friends  in  Europe — alienated  from  the  British, 
the  object  of  exploitations  envy  of  the  French,  the 
object  of  military  menace  by  the  Russians,  Aus¬ 
trians,  and  the  Balkan  peoples.  In  this  situation 
their  religion  was  no  refuge  to  them.  It  was  a  tool, 
and,  Europeanized  liberals  as  most  of  them  were,  it 
was  a  tool  too  unsuited  to  their  temperaments  and 
points  of  view  for  any  but  the  crudest  and  most  bung¬ 
ling  uses.  They  looked  to  Europe  for  a  way  out,  and 
they  found  it  in  the  chauvinistic  nationalism  which, 
after  the  Franco-Prussian  War,  had  become  the  Euro¬ 
pean  style.  The  model  they  took  was  naturally 
Prussia,  and  they  added  the  trickeries  of  electoral 
regulations,  of  racial  disablements,  and  the  other  de¬ 
vices  of  that  highly  organized  oligarchy  to  the  tradi¬ 
tionally  Turkish  methods  of  government  into  which 
they  found  themselves  spontaneously  sinking  back. 

That  step  once  taken,  the  others  in  the  imitatio 
Christianis  followed  inevitably.  As  they  had  changed 
from  religious  tolerance  and  nationalist  indifference 


114  ZIONISM  AND  WORLD  POLITICS 


to  religious  indifference  and  nationalist  chauvinism, 
so  they  changed  from  nationalist  chauvinism  to 
cultural  imperialism.  To  the  oppressive  pan-Slavism 
and  pan-Germanism  of  the  Russians  and  the  Prussians, 
there  was  added,  thus,  the  no-more-unworthy  pan- 
Turanianism  of  the  Turks.  They  saw  a  vision!  a 
vision  of  a  mighty,  united  modern  empire,  stretching 
from  the  Bosporus  to  Persia,  from  Sinai  to  the  Black 
Sea.  The  language  of  this  empire  was  to  be  Turkish, 
and  its  literature  and  cultivation  were  to  be  not  less 
than  the  best.  It  was  to  be  economically  and  politi¬ 
cally  as  powerful  as  the  most  powerful,  and  culturally 
as  vigorous  as  the  most  vigorous.  That  its  attain¬ 
ment  meant  the  spiritual  if  not  the  physical  murder 
of  the  Greek,  Armenian,  Kurd,  Druse,  Arab,  Jewish 
and  other  populations  of  the  empire  did  not  trouble 
the  seers.  These  subject  populations  could  Turkify 
if  they  were  made  to:  did  not  the  Germans  and  the 
Hungarians  and  the  Austrians  and  the  Russians  com¬ 
pel  their  own  subject-populations?  The  order  for 
Ottomanization  went  out.  Inhabitants  of  the  land 
were  willy-nilly  to  be  turned  into  Turks,  bag  and 
baggage,  Turks  in  language,  in  allegiance,  in  military 
and  fiscal  obligation.  The  necessity  of  doing  this 
became,  in  the  opinion  of  the  Committee  of  Union 
and  Progress,  all  the  more  urgent  after  the  disastrous 
war  with  the  Balkan  League.  A  pan-Turanian  propa¬ 
ganda,  led  by  Tekin  Alp,  was  carried  on  among  the 
Turks;  Syrians  and  Armenians  were  faced  with  the 
alternatives  of  Turkifying  or  being  exterminated. 

These  policies  suited  the  interests  and  received  the 
encouragement  of  imperial  Germany.  From  the  time 
that  the  rulers  of  that  unfortunate  country  decided 


THE  NEAR-EASTERN  QUESTION  115 

to  adventure  after  “a  place  in  the  sun,”  the  cultivation 
of  friendly  relations  with  Turkey  became  the  foundation 
of  that  scheme  of  empire  known  since  the  beginning 
of  the  Great  War  as  Mittel  Europa .  Turkey  was  to  be 
the  keystone  of  this  arch  of  empire  in  the  domain  of 
business  enterprise,  the  keystone  of  this  arch  of  empire 
in  the  dreamt-of  hegemony  of  Asia  and  Africa.  The 
relations  with  the  Young  Turks  were  made  closer  and 
more  intimate  as  the  latter’s  relations  with  the  other 
European  powers  grew  colder  and  more  strained  : 
German  teachers  in  Turkish  schools,  particularly  in 
the  technological  schools',  German  reorganizers  for 
Turkish  business  and  Turkish  finances;  German  officers 
and  German  reorganization  for  the  Turkish  army; 
German  concessionaries  for  Turkish  natural  resources, 
such  as  coal  mines  at  Rodosto  and  copper  mines  at 
Arghana  Maden;  German  concessionaries  for  Turkish 
public  utilities  such  as  railroads,  harbours,  and  irriga¬ 
tion  undertakings;  German  religious,  scholastic,  philan¬ 
thropic,  and  colonial  enterprises  all  over  the  empire, 
in  Palestine,  noticeably.  Above  all,  the  German 
language  everywhere,  displacing  Greek  or  Arabic  or 
Armenian  or  Hebrew,  and  rivalling  Turkish.  Thus 
in  the  empire  of  the  Ottomans  razor  was  cutting  razor. 
Turkification  and  Germanization  were  going  on  at  the 
same  time  and  prefacing  a  complicated  future  indeed 
for  both  the  masters  and  the  subjects  of  the  processes. 

Palestinian  Jewry  was  the  first  of  the  non-Turkish 
peoples  of  the  empire  to  feel  their  effects.  The  nature 
and  purposes  of  the  Jewish  settlement  in  Palestine 
became  the  subject  of  malicious  animadversion  in  the 
German-language  press  in  Constantinople.  The  Zion¬ 
ist  movement  and  its  plans  became  an  item  in  the 


116  ZIONISM  AND  WORLD  POLITICS 


Franco-German  rivalries.  The  prominence  of  Jews 
of  German  citizenship  in  the  movement  added  to  the 
dislike  with  which  the  assimilatory  directorate  of  the 
Alliance  Israelite  Universelle  regarded  it,  and  led  to 
provocative  exchanges  with  members  of  the  Committee 
of  Union  and  Progress  in  Palestine.  Discussion  upon  it 
took  place  in  the  Turkish  Parliament.  It  emerged  that 
Zionism  was  being  described  as  the  spear-head  of  an 
international  conspiracy  of  financiers  against  the  integ¬ 
rity  of  the  Turkish  Empire;  that  it  was  a  device  to 
secure  the  hegemony  of  the  empire’s  peoples;  and  so 
on.  A  pan-Arabian  movement  postulated  upon  anti- 
Jewish  propaganda,  and  with  an  evident  French  back¬ 
ground  made  its  appearance.  All  this  was  to  be  added 
to  the  pan-Turanianism  of  the  Ottoman  Jews  them¬ 
selves.  These  symptoms  of  the  French  bid  against  the 
Germans  for  Turkish  good-will  served  only  to  unify  the 
Jewry  of  Palestine  and  to  intensify  their  consciousness  of 
nationality.  Practical  measures  taken  by  the  Turkish 
government — the  sudden  renewal  of  the  enforcement 
of  the  rules  requiring  Jews  who  entered  Palestine  to 
obtain  the  “red  ticket”  which  permitted  them  to  stay 
there  three  months,  the  attempt  to  penalize  all  Jews 
inhabiting  Palestine  into  Ottoman  citizenship,  and 
finally  the  abolition  of  the  capitulations  with  the  con¬ 
sequent  subjection  of  foreign  settlers  to  the  dominion 
of  Turkish  law — these  singly  and  together  generated 
an  emotion  which  crystallized  into  national  solidarity. 

But  the  irresistible  agent  of  nationalization  was 
the  assault  upon  the  one  symbol  of  Jewish  solidarity 
which  has  been  perennial  and  has  survived  all  the 
disintegrating  forces  which  have  worked  upon  Jewish 
life.  This  symbol  is  the  Hebrew  language.  With 


THE  NEAR-EASTERN  QUESTION  117 

what  pains  and  how  heroically  it  had  been  made  the 
speech  of  the  children  of  the  land  and  the  language  of 
the  schools,  has  been  recorded.  The  most  conspicuous 
and  cherished  symbol  of  nationality  among  the  other 
suppressed  peoples  of  Europe  and  Asia,  how  much  more 
precious  was  their  language  to  the  Jews,  whose  sole  and 
only  symbol  it  was,  where  the  others  had  at  least 
in  addition  the  occupation  of  their  lands  by  their  own 
national  masses,  and  the  continuity  and  stability  of 
their  national  customs  and  traditions.  Among  the 
Jews  of  the  Diaspora  Hebrew  was  the  lingua  franca, 
the  Esperanto  overruling  their  babel;  in  Palestine  it 
was  the  cement  that  suffused  and  unified  their  di¬ 
versities  of  origination,  speech,  sect,  and  custom.  All 
the  agencies  at  work  among  Palestinian  Jews  felt  this — 
English,  German,  even  the  French.  The  schools 
they  supported  and  the  teachers  they  sent  out  made 
use  of  Hebrew  as  the  medium  of  instruction.  Sud¬ 
denly,  and  in  a  very  conspicuous  case,  the  Hilfsverein 
der  Deutschen  Juden,  which  had  been  the  German 
section  of  the  Alliance  Israelite  Universelle  and  had 
split  off  from  it,  appeared  as  the  protagonist  of  German. 
This  was  in  1913.  The  Hilfsverein  had  for  some  years 
previously  been  conducting  and  supporting  schools  in 
Palestine,  and  in  all  of  them  the  language  of  instruction 
had  initially  been  Hebrew.  The  disturbance  into 
which  the  linguistic  cause  celebre  threw  the  Jewish  world 
brought  to  light  the  fact  that  German  was  being 
insinuated  to  displace  Hebrew  in  the  schools  with  which 
the  Hilfsverein  had  any  relations.  The  revealing  oc¬ 
casion  appeared  itself  to  be  a  last  step  in  a  scheme  of 
Germanification  that  fitted  too  well  with  the  known 
programme  of  German  imperialism.  This  occasion 


118  ZIONISM  AND  WORLD  POLITICS 


was  the  determination  of  the  language  of  instruction 
for  the  projected  Polytechnic  Institute  at  Haifa.  The 
bulk  of  the  funds  for  the  organization  of  the  Institute 
had  come  from  the  Wissotzkis,  Hovevei  Zionists  of 
Moscow,  and  from  a  number  of  American  philanthro¬ 
pists  interested  in  Palestine.  The  very  small  remain¬ 
der  had  been  contributed  by  the  Hilfsverein  itself, 
while  the  National  Fund  had  contributed  the  land. 
A  question  by  Dr.  Schmarja  Levin  regarding  the  at¬ 
titude  of  the  organization  toward  the  language  to  be 
used  in  the  schools  and  the  Polytechnic  forced  the 
German  members  of  the  board  at  last  to  go  explicitly 
on  record  in  favour  of  Germanization.  The  Zionists 
thereon — Ahad  Ha’am,  Doctor  Levin,  and  Doctor 
Tschlenow — necessarily  resigned.  The  Zionist  Organ¬ 
ization  immediately  drew  the  Americans  into  the 
controversy,  and  an  appearance  was  created  of  Ger¬ 
mania  contra  mundum.  For  they,  although  only  a  very 
few  were  Zionists,  agreed  with  the  Palestinians.  The 
Hilfsverein,  holding  title  to  the  plant,  remained  in  pos¬ 
session  of  it.1 

But  it  was  an  empty  shell  they  remained  in  possession 
of.  The  event  had  thrown  the  Jewry  of  Palestine  into 
a  turmoil.  The  Teachers’  Union  protested,  and  their 
members  employed  in  the  Hilfsverein  schools  were 
locked  out  by  its  officials.  Thereupon  the  pupils  struck 
and  with  them  the  remaining  teachers.  There  were 
meetings,  parades,  speeches.  The  whole  Yishub  was 
aroused.  Money  was  raised  to  help  the  impecunious 
pupils  and  to  support  the  striking  and  locked-out 


JIt  has  since  sold  it  to  the  World  Zionist  Organization  for  the  amount 
actually  put  in  by  the  German  directors.  It  was  paid  for  by  the  late  Jacob 
H.  Schiff  who  had  contributed  liberally  toward  its  foundation. 


THE  NEAR-EASTERN  QUESTION  119 

teachers.  An  integrated  national  school  system  of  a 
sort  was  worked  out  somehow,  and  the  Zionist  Organ¬ 
ization  pledged  itself  to  meet  the  budget  of  the  system. 
The  men  and  women  who  made  the  system  are  mem¬ 
bers  of  the  Agudath  Hamorim  or  Teachers’  Association. 
There  is  no  unrelated  or  independent  school  committee, 
no  demoralizing  external  control  of  the  teacher’s  opinion, 
subject-matter  or  method.  The  teachers  themselves, 
united  in  this  association,  have  created  the  standards — 
such  as  they  are — for  the  village  and  city  schools,  have 
licensed  teachers,  have  prepared  the  needful  textbooks. 
The  teaching  fraternity  in  Jewish  Palestine  is,  with  all 
its  handicaps  and  incompetency,  what  it  is  nowhere 
else  in  the  world:  a  democratic,  autonomous,  responsi¬ 
ble  professional  body,  eager  for  the  advancement  and 
maintenance  of  professional  standards  and  professional 
competency.  Its  success  has  been  extraordinary, 
considering  the  poorness  of  the  material,  the  shortness 
of  the  time,  and  the  straitness  of  the  circumstances, 
yet  the  thing  to  be  expected,  considering  its  autonomy 
and  responsibility.  Behind  it  was  the  awakened 
national  morale  of  the  Jewry  of  Palestine,  aflame  over 
the  assault  upon  the  spiritual  integrity  of  their  one 
truly  national  institution.  In  a  certain  sense  the  Pales¬ 
tinian  language-struggle  was  the  first  pitched  battle  of 
the  Great  War.  It  was  a  true  and  essential  confron¬ 
tation  of  the  ideals  of  imperialism  and  democracy, 
and  in  that  confrontation  democracy  was  completely 
victorious. 


CHAPTER  XI 


ENTER  AMERICAN  JEWRY 

WHAT  the  line  of  development  for  the  Jewish 
communities  in  Palestine  would  have  been  if  the  war 
had  not  intervened  is  a  fairly  simple  inference.  Ad¬ 
ministrative  foresight  was  not  looking  very  far  ahead 
nor  very  far  around.  The  policy  of  “  economic  penetra¬ 
tion,  ”  in  the  shape  of  more  or  less  experimental  colonies, 
private  industries,  and  such  small  fry,  would  have  been 
carried  on,  in  a  manner  more  or  less  desultory  and 
by  methods  more  or  less  lackadaisical.  The  policy 
of  4 4 cultural”  development  would  have  been  carried 
on  energetically  and  aggressively  though  not  efficiently. 
The  Eleventh  Congress,  which  met  in  1913,  authorized 
the  project  of  a  national  Hebrew  University,  and  the 
multiplication  of  Hebrew  periodicals — verse,  fiction, 
criticism,  scientific  monographs  and  textbooks — was 
a  foregone  conclusion.  But  the  war  intervened.  And 
the  war,  even  if  it  turn  out  not  to  have  been  a  momen¬ 
tous  readjustment  in  the  history  of  the  world,  was  con¬ 
spicuously  the  most  momentous  event  in  the  history  of 
the  Zionist  movement,  and  through  that,  in  the  history 
of  the  Jewish  people. 

Its  first  effect  upon  this  history  was  to  bring  into 
the  foreground  of  Jewish  activity  and  aspiration  the 
Jewish  community  in  America. 

The  story  of  this  community  is  a  modern  instance  so 

120 


ENTER  AMERICAN  JEWRY 


121 


typical  of  responsiveness  and  social  adaptability  in  an 
ethnic  group  that  it  of  itself  merits  more  than  a  glance. 
But  the  status  and  function  of  the  Jews  of  America 
in  the  solution  of  the  Jewish  problem  are  of  a  character 
that  make  a  review  of  their  story  indispensable. 

The  earliest  Jewish  settlers  in  the  United  States  were 
of  Spanish  and  Portuguese  origin.  They  came  from 
the  West  Indies.  In  religion  they  were  of  the  Sephardic 
sect.  They  settled  in  cities  like  New  York,  Newport, 
and  Charleston,  their  settlement  dating  back  nearly 
300  years.  Small  in  number  and  prosperous  in  their 
commercial  and  other  enterprises,  they  soon  made  a 
place  for  themselves  in  the  greater  colonial  communities, 
in  spite  of  religious  differences  and  certain  exclusions. 
Their  contacts  with  non-Jews  were  social  as  well  as 
commercial  and  before  long  extended  to  the  intimate 
relationship  of  marriage  and  a  common  life.  Of 
necessity  a  decreasing  community,  they  made  up  in 
the  progressive  rigour  of  their  synagogal  discipline 
for  the  increasing  lability  of  their  members.  They 
played  their  part  in  the  enterprise  of  the  Revolution, 
contributing  their  quota  in  both  men  and  money, 
in  money  very  significantly  indeed. 

The  place  they  established  as  Americans  they 
guarded  jealously.  When  between  ’36  and  ’60  a 
new  type  of  Jew  began  to  enter  the  United  States  in 
large  numbers,  they  drew  a  class  line  as  rigid  and  as 
bitter  as  any  drawn  in  America  by  the  older  settlers 
against  newcomers.  They  acknowledged  the  unity 
of  stock  and  religion  between  themselves  and  the 
immigrant  Jews  from  Germany,  but  admitted  no  other 
sort  of  unity.  The  German  Jews  were  good  enough 
to  act  as  their  clerks,  their  servants,  and  their  depen- 


122  ZIONISM  AND  WORLD  POLITICS 


dents,  but  no  more.  The  notion  that  they  might  be¬ 
come  their  rivals  was  inadmissible.  The  German 
Jews,  however,  soon  began  enormously  to  outnumber 
the  original  Spanish  and  Portuguese  Jewish  communi¬ 
ties.  Differences  in  origin  and  in  economic  status, 
reinforced  by  the  coordinate  sectarian  differences, 
generated  a  community  warfare,  partly  conscious, 
mostly  unconscious,  in  which,  as  was  inevitable,  the 
numbers  were  decisive.  To-day  the  American  Sephar¬ 
dic  communities  of  the  United  States  are  on  the  whole 
negligible,  and  those  which  have  survived  with  any¬ 
thing  like  the  power  and  distinction  which  invested 
them  in  the  beginning  have  survived  by  virtue  of  the 
fact  that  instead  of  fighting  out  the  class  war  to  the 
bitter  end,  they  admitted  the  German  Jews  to  an 
equality  with  themselves  and  assimilated  them  instead 
of  being  assimilated  by  them.  Such  are  the  communi¬ 
ties  which  survive  in  Philadelphia  and  in  New  York. 

The  admission  meant  that  a  generation  of  Jewish 
immigrants  from  Germany  had  under  free  conditions 
achieved  the  same  kind  of  adaptation  to  the  larger 
social  environment  as  the  original  Sephardic  Jews. 
It  meant  that  they  had  become  full-fledged  Americans, 
men  of  influence,  wealth,  and  power,  leaders  in  the 
community.  Their  attaining  of  prosperity  and  of 
the  full  status  of  the  American  Jew  was  marked  most 
distinctly  by  the  Reform  movement  in  the  synagogue. 
This  movement  operated  in  the  United  States  as  else¬ 
where.  It  abolished  the  essential  basis  of  communal 
life  which  most  of  all  served  to  distinguish  the  Jew  in 
association  with  the  Jew  as  against  the  Jew  in  associa¬ 
tion  with  the  Gentile.  The  way  of  living  got  changed 
from  Jewish  to  non- Jewish.  Pig-flesh  and  shell-fish 


ENTER  AMERICAN  JEWRY  123 

were  admitted  into  the  household,  and  intermarriage, 
while  ecclesiastically  discouraged,  was,  on  the  whole, 
not  prohibited.  Hebrew  was  almost  completely  elimi¬ 
nated  from  the  synagogue  ritual.  The  prayer  and 
the  liturgy  gave  way  to  the  sermon,  and  the  status 
of  the  rabbi  changed  from  that  of  an  arbitrator  of  all 
matters  in  the  daily  life  to  that  of  a  teacher  and  con¬ 
servator  of  religious  dogma. 

By  the  time  the  first  large  mass  of  east  European 
Jews  began  to  enter  the  United  States,  the  Jews  of 
German  origin  had  acquired  the  same  relation  to  the 
country  as  the  Jews  of  Sephardic  origin.  They  had 
become  the  de  facto  heads  and  elders  of  the  Jewish 
community,  the  inevitable  middle  term  between  the 
newcomers  and  the  American  order  of  life.  To  the 
newcomers,  nothing  could  have  been  more  foreign 
than  the  American  order  of  life.  In  the  countries 
from  which  they  came  they  had  been  living,  it  must 
be  remembered,  under  mediaeval  conditions — without 
status  before  the  law,  without  rights  and  without  duties 
as  citizens,  and  without  any  legal  claim  that  they 
could  compel  the  government  to  make  good.  ‘ ‘Mediae¬ 
val’ ’  is  the  only  word  that  could  signalize  their  status. 
And  under  mediaeval  conditions  the  position  of  any 
Jewish  community  anywhere  in  the  world  had  de¬ 
pended  exclusively  on  the  good-will  of  a  single  indi¬ 
vidual  or  of  a  small  group  of  such  individuals.  These 
might  at  any  time  in  God’s  name  let  loose  or  restrain 
the  populace,  as  they  chose.  Contact  between  the 
Jews  and  Gentile  arbiters  of  their  destiny  could  never 
be  established  directly.  It  had  to  be  made  through 
a  third  party,  a  go-between  for  whom  the  Jews  had  the 
special  name  of  Sh’tadlan.  The  Sh'tadlan  was  some- 


124  ZIONISM  AND  WORLD  POLITICS 


times  a  banker,  sometimes  a  merchant  of  great  wealth, 
sometimes  a  physician — any  person  who  had  achieved 
importance  in  the  eyes  of  the  Gentile  oppressor,  and  who 
could  win  his  ear.  Such  a  person  could  sometimes  fore¬ 
stall  a  pogrom  or  an  auto-da-fe  by  climbing  back  stairs 
and  bribing  safety  and  consideration.  It  was  natural  and 
inevitable  that  such  a  person  should  become  the  literal 
“boss”  of  the  Jewish  community,  and  should  direct 
its  policy  and  dictate  its  conduct  within  and  without. 
His  role  was,  in  fact,  to  be  the  saviour  of  the  community, 
actual  or  potential;  to  be  its  only  effective  reassuring 
link  with  the  world  outside — and  hence,  its  master. 

Now  the  relation  of  any  immigrant  group  to  the 
civilization  of  a  new  country  whose  institutions  and 
language  are  different  from  anything  that  its  members 
ever  knew  is  not  unlike  that  of  the  mediaeval  Jew  or 
of  the  contemporary  east  European  Jew  toward  the 
larger  community  of  which  he  is  a  part.  The  immi¬ 
grant  of  any  stock  is  in  extreme  need  of  a  mediator 
between  himself  and  his  environment,  a  mediator  who 
shall  bridge  the  differences  and  establish  some  sort  of 
communion  that  may  ease  and  simplify  the  mere 
business  of  living.  This  was  particularly  true  of  the 
Jew,  for  the  Jew  was  regarded  alien  in  a  double  sense: 
he  was  regarded  alien  because  he  came  from  another 
country  with  quite  different  institutions  and  ideals,  and 
he  was  regarded  alien  because  he  was  denied  a  share 
even  in  the  institutions  and  ideals  of  that  other  country. 
To  him  government  was  necessarily  identical  with 
oppression,  the  policeman  with  bribery,  the  civil 
officer  with  petty  tyranny.  He  was  met  in  America 
by  his  fellow- Jew  of  German  origin.  This  fellow- Jew 
served  as  a  miraculously  ready  God-sent  SJitadlan. 


ENTER  AMERICAN  JEWRY 


125' 


The  necessities  of  adaptation  to  the  new  conditions 
required  a  go-between  and  on  the  whole,  the  Jews 
were  more  fortunate  than  the  immigrants  of  other 
stocks  in  that  they  found  this  go-between  ready  made, 
of  their  own  blood  and  religion.  On  the  other  hand, 
the  existence  of  the  go-between  meant  the  reinforcement 
and  continuation  of  the  mediaeval  tradition.  The 
attitude  of  the  German  Jew  toward  the  east  European 
Jew  became  spontaneously  the  attitude  of  the  mediaeval 
and  east  European  Sh’tadlan  toward  the  Jewish 
community.  American  Jews  of  German  origin  as¬ 
sumed,  as  was  natural,  complete  responsibility  for  their 
Eastern  brethren.  They  became  their  spokesmen, 
they  defined  their  politics  for  them,  they  looked  after 
their  physical  and  intellectual  needs,  they  “American¬ 
ized”  them,  and  they  despised  them  cordially. 

The  first  step  was  to  insure  against  their  ever 
becoming  public  burdens.  To  do  this  the  German 
Jew  organized  and  elaborated  systematic  benevolent 
agencies  which  have  been  models  of  “scientific  charity” 
and  have  had  a  large  influence  in  giving  direction  to 
the  progress  of  charitable  organization  in  the  United 
States.  In  the  second  place,  they  gave  them  employ¬ 
ment.  When  the  Eastern  Jews  began  to  enter  the 
United  States  in  large  numbers,  certain  industries, 
most  particularly  the  needle  trades,  were  almost  ex¬ 
clusively  in  the  hands  of  the  German  Jews;  the  Eastern 
Jews  were  employed  in  sweat  shops  and  kept  by  the  evil 
devices  of  unregenerate  employers  on  starvation  wages, 
to  be  saved  from  starvation  by  the  charity  of  these  same 
employers. 

As  for  the  possibility  of  any  other  relationship, 
social  or  cultural,  between  the  two  types  of  Jewish 


126  ZIONISM  AND  WORLD  POLITICS 


communities,  this  was  not  even  admitted.  From  the 
point  of  view  of  the  German  Jew,  the  Russian  Jew  was 
good  enough  to  be  exploited  in  the  shops,  at  the  polls, 
to  be  spoken  for  in  public  and  rather  scorned  and  dis¬ 
liked  in  private.  It  used  to  be  impossible,  for  example, 
for  a  Russian  Jew  to  gain  admission  into  a  German- 
Jewish  fraternal  order  like  the  B’nai  Brith.  It  used  to 
be  impossible  for  a  Russian  Jew  to  acquire  membership 
in  a  German  Jewish  synagogue  or  a  social  club.  The 
sectarian  difference  between  reform  and  orthodox  Juda¬ 
ism  was  even  greater  and  marked  a  greater  social  gulf 
than  the  sectarian  differences  between  the  original  Seph¬ 
ardim  and  Ashkenazim,  these  being  the  two  prevailing 
brands  of  orthodoxy.  All  this,  nevertheless,  the  first 
generation  of  Eastern  Jews  seem  to  have  accepted  as 
natural,  as  inevitable,  as  proper,  and  with  gratitude. 

But  a  generation  of  living  in  America,  even  such  an 
America  as  was  New  York  City,  meant  inevitably 
the  “Americanization”  of  the  east  European  Jew. 
The  mere  pressure  of  American  political  institutions 
gave  this  Jew  a  new  sense  of  his  relation  to  the  Govern¬ 
ment.  He  found  himself  free  and  civically  responsible. 
He  found  himself  participating  in  the  business  of  the 
Government.  He  found  himself  called  upon  to  de¬ 
termine  with  his  ballot  who  shall  govern  him  and  what 
the  policy  of  government  shall  be,  not  only  of  his  city 
and  his  state,  but  of  his  nation  also.  However  blindly 
the  masses  found  themselves  in  their  citizenship,  its 
effect  on  their  attitude  toward  government  has  been 
marked  in  the  extraordinary  independence  of  what  is 
called  the  Jewish  vote.  In  the  field  of  business,  trade, 
and  manufacture,  the  natural  initiative  of  the  east 
European  Jew  soon  changed  him  from  an  employee 


ENTER  AMERICAN  JEWRY  127 

into  a  rival  of  his  German  co-religionist.  His  restive¬ 
ness  under  injustice  made  him  the  initiator  of  the  Trade 
Union  movement  in  his  particular  field,  and  brought 
to  his  employer  the  first  realization  of  the  possibility 
that  the  Russian  Jew  might  be  a  competitor  and  an 
opponent  as  well  as  a  servant.  A  far-reaching  economic 
rivalry  developed  which  lasted  over  a  generation, 
until  finally  one  industry  at  least  is  now  as  compre¬ 
hensively  Russian  Jewish  as  it  had  been  formerly  Ger¬ 
man  Jewish,  and  the  enterprise  of  the  Russian  Jew  has 
spread  into  a  great  many  other  regions.  In  fact,  the 
signal  growth  of  New  York  City — where  every  fourth 
person  is  said  to  be  a  Jew — begins  with  the  first  great 
immigration  of  Russian  Jews  in  the  year  1882. 

A  generation  of  American  life  brought  prosperity 
and  independence  to  the  newcomers.  With  the  coming 
of  independence  and  prosperity,  the  caste  war  became 
intensified.  The  later  comers  began  to  go  more  and 
more  on  their  own.  To  meet  the  exclusion  from  the 
earlier  fraternal  orders,  they  organized  new  fraternal 
orders  like  the  Brith  Abraham  and  the  Brith  Shalom. 
They  organized  their  own  “orthodox”  charities,  and 
their  wealth  gave  them  a  place  on  the  charity  boards 
of  the  earlier  American  Jews.  Their  wealth,  further¬ 
more,  stimulated  their  social  ambitions  and  they  began 
to  pass  from  orthodox  to  reform  synagogues,  ceasing 
thereby  to  be  “Russian”  and  becoming  “German” 
Jews.  The  difference  to-day  between  orthodox  and 
reform  Judaism,  apart  from  dietetic  and  a  few  other 
habits  of  life,  is  in  large  part  a  difference  in  nothing 
so  much  as  in  economic  status.  The  dogmas  of  the 
two  Churches  are  in  what  theologians  would  call  es¬ 
sential  matters  the  same,  but  the  Orthodox  Church  is 


128  ZIONISM  AND  WORLD  POLITICS 


with  few  exceptions  the  church  of  the  poor,  and  the 
Reform  Church  is  the  church  of  the  rich  and  the  well- 
to-do. 

This  encroachment  of  the  newer  community  met 
with  a  deepening  if  reflexive  resistance  on  the  part  of 
the  older  community.  As  the  economic  and  other 
differences  grew  less,  the  social  differences  received 
greater  emphasis.  The  “German”  Jews  found  them¬ 
selves  after  a  while  in  the  same  position  with  reference 
to  the  “Russian”  Jews  as  the  Sephardim  had  been 
with  reference  to  them.  The  encroachment  of  the 
“Russians”  upon  the  privileges  of  the  “Germans” 
meant  two  things:  on  the  one  side,  a  combination  of 
interests;  and  on  the  other,  a  sharper  drawing  of  social 
and  other  lines.  The  combination  of  interests  sprang 
from  one  fact  among  others  that  young  “Russian” 
lads  flocked  in  large  numbers  into  the  professions  and 
became  eligible  husbands  for  young  “German”  girls. 
The  second  basis  turned  on  the  weight  of  economic 
similarity  itself.  Capitalists  are  compelled  by  the 
interests  of  capital  to  cooperate,  and  the  “Germaniza- 
tion”  of  the  prosperous  “Russian”  was  an  effect  of 
his  economic  prosperity.  It  meant  that  a  section 
of  the  original  east  European  Jewish  group  was  slowly 
getting  detached  and  infiltrating  the  community  of 
earlier  settlers.  It  meant,  furthermore,  that  the 
numerical  strength  of  the  “Russian”  Jews  would  soon 
compel  a  reversal  of  the  process  and  that  the  assimila¬ 
tion  of  the  “German”  Jew  to  the  “Russian”  Jew,  like 
the  assimilation  of  the  Sephardim  to  the  “German” 
Jew,  was  a  foregone  conclusion. 

Whether  this  process  was  consciously  realized  or  un¬ 
derstood  by  the  protagonists  of  the  two  classes  is  doubt- 


ENTER  AMERICAN  JEWRY 


129 


ful.  What  was  noticeable  in  the  years  between  1900 
and  1914  was  an  increasing  osmosis  of  these  classes, 
and  an  attempted  tightening  of  the  lines  on  the  part 
of  the  earlier,  more  “assimilated”  class  in  direct  pro¬ 
portion  to  the  osmotic  pressure. 

In  the  meantime,  a  permanent  proletarian  mass  came 
to  self-consciousness  under  the  influence  of  two  forces. 
One  was  the  spread  of  the  labour  movement  which  in 
the  Ghetto  had  a  Socialist  theory  of  life  and  labour  to 
envisage  it,  a  theory  propagated  by  many  of  the  most 
intellectual  of  the  immigrant  classes  and  articulated 
in  a  notorious,  powerful  Yiddish  newspaper.  The  other 
was  the  Zionist  movement. 

The  movement  had  been  marked,  on  the  whole, 
with  an  international  outlook  and  economic  vision 
analogous  to  that  of  the  Socialist  movement.  It 
had  shown  itself,  however,  far  more  sensitive  to  the 
facts  of  life.  Conceiving  society  as  a  collection  of 
group  individualities,  each  of  which  is  entitled  to  the 
free  and  equal  fulfilment  of  its  life  and  the  attainment 
of  its  happiness,  it  argued  its  cause  in  terms  of  a  vision 
of  society  as  a  great  family  of  nationalities  carrying 
on  the  enterprises  of  civilization  cooperatively,  each 
contributing  to  the  others  according  to  its  nature  and 
power.  It  asked  particularly  for  the  Jewish  people, 
a  majority  of  whom  are  oppressed  and  outlawed,  the 
opportunity  which  all  other  people  have  for  themselves. 
And  it  asked  this  opportunity  in  Palestine,  the  original 
homeland  of  the  people,  fixed  through  the  usage  of 
religion  and  the  immemorial  idealism  of  the  race  as 
the  goal  of  Jewish  endeavour  and  suffering  throughout 
history.  Zionism  was  calculated  to  make  a  closer 
appeal  to  the  masses  of  the  Jews  in  America  because 


130  ZIONISM  AND  WORLD  POLITICS 


it  invoked  instincts,  memories,  attitudes,  which  were 
hereditary  and  had  been  passed  on  through  the  genera¬ 
tions.  Its  appeal,  in  a  word,  was  internal  while  the 
appeal  of  Socialism  was  external.  The  individual  of  no 
nationality,  particularly  not  the  individual  of  the 
Jewish  nationality,  conceives  himself  as  necessarily 
and  inevitably  a  member  of  an  economic  class.  It  is 
precisely  for  this  reason  that  the  Jews  in  America  have 
turned  out  to  be  at  one  and  the  same  time  such  con¬ 
spicuous  protagonists  of  the  Socialist  movement  al¬ 
though  they  seem  to  have  understood  its  protestant 
better  than  its  constructive  spirit,  and  such  thoroughly 
Americanized  trade-unionists,  undertakers,  captains 
of  industry,  and  financiers. 

Socialism  and  Zionism,  added  to  the  new  self- 
consciousness  as  citizens  which  the  immigrant  genera¬ 
tion  had  acquired,  gave  the  Jewish  masses  a  point 
of  departure  and  a  programme.  For  many  years 
neither  the  point  of  departure  nor  the  programme  was 
conscious.  They  were  there,  but  as  potentialities, 
and  the  daily  life  of  labourer  and  shopkeeper  went  on 
undisturbed.  The  Socialist  continued  the  Yiddish 
formulation  of  his  internationalist  Marxian  dogma. 
The  Zionist  continued  the  Yiddish  and  Hebrew 
formulation  of  his  nationalist  doctrine.  Both  were 
of  the  Ghetto — in  temper,  manner,  and  adequacy. 
Both  were  old- worldly.  The  protagonists  of  both 
were  men  and  women  of  European  background  and 
European  training;  the  followers  of  both  were  mainly 
of  the  first  generation  of  immigrants  from  the  older 
world.  Both  were  more  or  less  irrelevant  to  the 
problems  and  expanses  of  American  life.  They  went 
on,  only  tangent  to  that,  or  at  best  wordy  compensa- 


ENTER  AMERICAN  JEWRY 


131 


tions  for  its  restrictions,  ridicules,  and  strangeness. 
They  functioned  in  the  life  of  the  Ghetto  communities 
of  America  like  tunes  sung  at  the  machine,  or  in  hospital 
when  the  patient’s  discomfort  is  so  great  that  he  whistles 
to  keep  up  his  courage. 

Because  of  rapid  changes  caused  by  industry  in  the 
structure  of  American  economic  life,  Socialism  emerged 
first  from  irrelevancy  and  foreignness,  from  the  Ghetto 
of  speech  and  intellectual  preoccupation,  and  its  devo¬ 
tees  found  themselves  at  last  organized  and  defined 
upon  the  arena  of  American  political  and  social  life, 
as  American  Socialists  of  Yiddish  speech,  denying 
and  repudiating  their  Jewish  connection  and  its  implica¬ 
tion  in  behalf  of  the  fellowship  of  labour  the  world 
over,  but  particularly  in  America.  They  often  had 
great  sport  abusing  the  Zionists,  and  the  Zionists  had 
great  sport  abusing  them. 

The  latter  emerged  from  their  irrelevancy  only  with 
the  coming  of  the  war  in  1914.  Until  that  time,  the 
American  Zionist  Organization  numbered  a  handful. 
Its  members  were  journalists,  intellectuals,  shop¬ 
keepers,  and  more  or  less  skilled  workmen.  Their 
spirit  and  outlook  and  methods  were  of  the  tradition 
of  the  European  Ghettoes  from  which  they  had  come. 
Their  centre  was  the  lower  east  side  of  New  York. 
Their  relations  with  Jews  of  American  nativity,  training, 
and  vision  were  of  the  slightest.  Their  organization 
had  been  headed  by  such  a  Jew,  Richard  Gottheil, 
a  professor  of  Semitics  at  Columbia  University.  Such 
a  Jew  was  its  founder  and  has  served  them  as  the  first 
secretary  of  their  federation — Stephen  Wise,  now  the 
foremost  rabbi  of  the  Reformed  sect;  foremost  both 
for  the  distinction  of  his  pulpit  and  his  role  in  public 


132  ZIONISM  AND  WORLD  POLITICS 


life.  A  few  such  Jews  were  enrolled  in  the  membership 
— mostly  university  men,  teachers  or  students,  moved 
to  affiliation  by  an  ancestral  sympathy  or  by  a  greater 
knowledge  of  the  nature  of  nationality,  its  relation 
to  the  Jews,  to  internationalism,  and  to  the  problem 
in  Europe  than  was  the  concern  or  the  fortune  of  most 
of  the  American  population. 

These  intellectuals  were  almost  exclusively  of  the 
same  extraction  as  the  rank  and  file  of  the  Zionists. 
The  “German”  Jews,  the  “American”  Jews,  i.  e.,  the 
well-to-do  Jews,  were  not  to  be  counted  among  them. 
As  in  Europe,  Zionism  was  an  object  of  suspicion  and 
attack  on  the  part  of  these  classes.  Their  spokesmen, 
preeminently  the  rabbis  of  the  Reformed  sect,  assaulted 
the  movement  in  America  with  even  more  vigour  and 
vindictiveness  than  did  their  confreres  in  Europe, 
with  indeed  an  added  intensity  of  resentment,  because 
of  its  secularism.  Reformed  Judaism  in  America 
being  most  sleek  and  prosperous,  made  a  great  deal 
more  than  its  analogue  in  Europe  of  “the  mission 
of  Israel,”  insisted  a  great  deal  more  upon  the  notion 
that  the  great  Jehovah  designed  his  chosen  people  to  be 
scattered  among  the  nations,  a  “priest  people”  charged 
with  the  task  of  manifesting  44  pure  ethical  monotheism  ” 
to  the  Gentile  neighbour.  The  wealthier  and  the  more 
secularized  the  congregation,  the  louder  was  its  rabbi 
in  his  insistence  on  its  religious  spirituality,  its  univer- 
salism,  and  its  mission,  and  the  bitterer  was  he  in  his 
denunciation  of  Zionism.  Controversy  took  about  the 
same  course  in  America  as  it  did  in  Europe,  with  the 
difference  that  the  men  on  the  Zionist  side  who  engaged 
in  it,  being  farther  from  the  problem-in-crisis  than  their 
European  fellows,  formulated  the  positions  involved 


ENTER  AMERICAN  JEWRY 


133 


with  an  eye  to  the  general  psychological  and  social 
situation  in  Europe.  This  tended  to  do  violence  to 
the  feeling  common  among  Jews  of  all  classes  regarding 
the  uniqueness  and  peculiarity  of  themselves  and  their 
problem.  It  tended  to  assimilate  the  Jewish  question 
into  the  general  complexus  of  the  nationalistic  and 
libertarian  strivings  of  nineteenth-century  Europe 
and  caused  some  disturbance  among  the  Zionists 
themselves.  The  American  Zionist  view  tended,  in 
a  word,  to  crystallize  in  a  formulation  of  the  Jewish 
position  less  partisan,  more  scientific,  more  historical 
and  sociological  than  formulations  made  at  the  seat  of 
the  Jewish  problem-in-crisis  in  central  Europe,  and 
the  American  Zionist  tended  toward  an  attitude  less 
ardent,  more  contemplative,  and  more  businesslike 
than  that  of  the  European.  There  was  natural  resent¬ 
ment  against  this  attitude  on  the  part  of  the  Europeans. 
They  accused  their  American  comrades  of  being  not 
“really”  Zionists,  of  being  superficial,  ignorant,  un¬ 
caring.  They  made  fun  of  the  Americans’  insight, 
joked  about  their  Zionist  competency,  and  treated  them 
like  the  proverbial  rich  parvenu.  “You  provide  the 
money,”  was  the  tenor  of  their  attitude,  “we  will  pro¬ 
vide  the  rest.”  On  the  other  hand,  the  American 
formulation  of  the  Zionist  position  won  in  America 
the  respectful  attention  and  in  the  course  of  time  the 
sympathy  and  then  the  adherence  of  one  after  another 
of  the  more  distinguished  Americans  both  of  Jewish 
and  non- Jewish  extraction. 

Among  these  was  Louis  Dembitz  Brandeis,  now  an 
Associate  Justice  of  the  Supreme  Court  of  the  United 
States.  By  birth  a  Kentuckian,  by  education  a  Eu¬ 
ropean,  by  training  and  vocation  a  lawyer,  and  by 


134  ZIONISM  AND  WORLD  POLITICS 


personal  habit  an  ascetic,  his  history  was  even  more 
uncomplicated  by  Jewish  connections  than  Herzl’s. 
They  simply  did  not  enter  into  his  own  problems,  and 
what  he  had  seen  of  Jews  in  the  practice  of  his  profes¬ 
sion  had  not  induced  him  to  seek  out  such  connections. 
There  was,  however,  in  his  inheritance  a  strain  of  mys¬ 
ticism,  mediaeval  in  articulateness  and  intensity. 
In  his  uncle,  Louis  Dembitz,  of  Louisville,  Kentucky, 
for  whom  he  had  been  named,  this  showed  itself  as  a 
scrupulous  observance  of  the  Shulchan  Aruch  and  a 
visionary  Zionism  of  the  Messianic  type.  In  Brandeis 
it  took  form  as  a  passion  for  democracy  and  social 
justice  which  rendered  him  the  protagonist  of  one 
fight  after  another  against  exploiters  of  the  public,  and 
earned  him  the  cognomen,  “the  people’s  lawyer.” 
Indeed,  it  was  largely  as  a  tribune  of  the  people  that 
he  functioned  in  the  years  before  his  acceptance  of  the 
judgeship,  fighting  often  alone  and  single-handed 
against  sinister  corporate  and  political  interests  of 
enormous  power,  influence,  and  unscrupulousness,  who 
to  beat  him  hesitated  at  no  stratagem,  even  the  libelling 
of  his  character  and  the  murdering  of  his  professional 
reputation.  The  completeness  of  their  defeat  and  his 
victory  is  a  matter  of  record,  but  the  struggle  could  not 
have  failed  to  leave  its  mark  upon  him.  To  the  prophet¬ 
like  truculency  of  his  temperament  and  the  passion¬ 
ate  humanitarianism  of  his  outlook  there  accrued  a 
rigidity  which  at  times  gave  his  really  distinguished 
powers  of  analysis  and  judgment  a  twist  of  advocacy, 
and  the  charge  often  levelled  against  him  by  his  enemies 
that  he  was  incapable  of  easily  giving  due  weight  to 
the  claims  or  justice  of  the  opposition  is  not  without 
its  basis  in  the  record.  His  powers  showed  themselves  to 


ENTER  AMERICAN  JEWRY 


135 


be  logical  rather  than  persuasive,  and  his  extraordinary 
influence  is  due  far  more  to  the  force  of  his  intellect  and 
his  uncompromising  honesty  than  to  his  understanding 
of  men’s  hearts.  He  is  no  politician.  His  leadership  and 
power  rest  on  an  uncanny  perception  of  the  concrete  im¬ 
plications  of  events  rendered  potent  by  a  consuming 
passion  for  righteousness.  It  is  this  at  bottom  that  led 
him  to  Zionism.  In  Brandeis,  for  the  first  time  in  the  his¬ 
tory  of  this  movement  anywhere,  a  truly  national  figure, 
a  man  of  affairs  as  well  as  of  vision,  enrolled  himself  defi¬ 
nitely  in  the  Zionist  Organization.  This  occurred  in  1910 
or  1911.  Nothing  formal  or  public  was  made  of  his 
adhesion,  and  its  manifestations  were  mainly  contribu¬ 
tions  to  the  treasury  and  sympathetic  understanding. 

His  call  to  leadership  came  with  the  war.  On 
August  1,  1914,  the  headquarters  of  the  International 
Zionist  Organization  was  in  Berlin,  that  city  being 
the  home  of  many  of  its  officers  and  within  easy  reach 
of  many  others.  After  August  3,  1914,  the  Interna¬ 
tional  Zionist  Organization  practically  ceased  to  have 
a  headquarters.  Its  officers  and  members  became 
officially  and  in  effect  enemies,  no  longer  able  to  meet 
for  counsel  or  action,  and  to  the  anxious  watchers  of  that 
anxious  period  no  longer  likely  to  meet.  The  Jewish 
national  interest  seemed  about  to  be  lost  by  default. 

Under  the  circumstances  the  officers  of  the  American 
Federation  of  Zionists,  at  the  instigation  of  Dr. 
Schmarja  Lewin,  took  the  initiative.  They  called, 
and  on  August  30,  1914,  held  in  New  York,  an  ex¬ 
traordinary  conference  of  Zionists  from  all  over  the 
country.  This  conference,  which  sat  for  two  days, 
created  the  Provisional  Executive  Committee  for 
General  Zionist  Affairs,  with  Louis  D.  Brandeis  as 


136  ZIONISM  AND  WORLD  POLITICS 


chairman  and  Stephen  S.  Wise  as  vice-chairman  and 
eventually  Jacob  de  Haas,  who  had  been  an  intimate 
of  Herzl’s,  as  secretary.  Associated  with  them  were  men 
like  the  distinguished  humanitarian  and  philanthropist, 
Nathan  Straus,  the  jurists  Felix  Frankfurter  and  Julian 
W.  Mack,  the  financier,  Eugene  Meyer,  and  many  others 
not  formerly  connected  with  Zionism. 

Immediately  a  new  spirit  began  to  manifest  itself 
not  only  in  the  organization,  but  in  American  Jewry 
at  large.  The  election  of  Brandeis  to  the  leadership 
turned  the  Zionist  movement  in  America  from  an 
incident  of  Ghetto  aspiration  into  a  force  to  be  counted 
with  in  Jewish  communal  life.  It  challenged  prestige 
and  prerogative  in  established  interests  in  the  American 
Jewish  community.  It  disputed  authority,  it  gave 
point  and  direction  to  the  communal  unrest  of  American 
Jewry  of  east  and  central  European  origin  and  back¬ 
ground.  The  old  issues  were  raised  afresh  and  rede¬ 
bated  in  the  new  setting  created  by  the  great  civil  war 
in  Europe  in  which  the  Jewish  people  of  eastern 
Europe  were  at  once  made  the  victims  of  both  the 
belligerents.  Laymen  as  well  as  rabbis  addressed 
themselves  to  the  fray,  and  “universal  Judaism” 
and  “the  mission  of  Israel”  were  fulminated  against 
Zionism  from  a  hundred  pulpits. 

In  the  course  of  the  controversy,  which  was  an  in¬ 
cident  to  far  more  practical  issues,  Brandeis  took 
occasion  to  state  in  unmistakable  terms  his  under¬ 
standing  of  the  view  of  the  American  Zionists  regarding 
the  Jewish  problem  and  its  solution.  He  demonstrated 
more  forcefully  than  it  had  ever  been  demonstrated 
before  the  futility  of  trying  to  evade  the  problem 
by  definition.  “Councils  of  rabbis,”  he  wrote,  “and 


ENTER  AMERICAN  JEWRY 


137 


others  have  undertaken  at  times  to  prescribe  by  defi¬ 
nition  that  only  those  shall  be  deemed  Jews  who  pro¬ 
fessedly  adhere  to  the  orthodox  or  Reformed  faith. 
But  in  the  connection  in  which  we  are  considering  the 
term,  it  is  not  in  the  power  of  any  single  body  of  Jews — 
or  indeed  of  all  Jews  collectively — to  establish  the 
effective  definition.  The  meaning  of  the  word  Jewish 
in  the  term  Jewish  Problem  must  be  accepted  as 
coextensive  with  the  disabilities  which  it  is  our  problem 
to  remove.  It  is  the  non-Jews  who  create  the  dis¬ 
abilities  and  in  so  doing  give  definition  to  the  term 
Jew.  These  disabilities  extend  substantially  to  all 
of  Jewish  blood.  They  do  not  end  with  a  renunciation 
of  faith,  however  sincere.  They  do  not  end  with  the 
elimination,  however  complete,  of  external  Jewish 
mannerisms.  The  disabilities  do  not  end  ordinarily 
until  the  Jewish  blood  has  been  so  thoroughly  diluted 
by  repeated  intermarriages  as  to  result  in  practically 
obliterating  the  Jew.”  That  also  persons  of  Jewish 
blood  recognize  this  situation  as  a  constant  factor  in 
their  setting  and  react  to  it  thus  is  shown  furthermore 
in  the  behaviour  of  even  the  most  de-Judaized  Jew. 
It  is  a  behaviour  that  acknowledges  the  claim  of  the 
group,  and  willy-nilly  takes  an  interest  in  its  fortunes. 
The  Jewish  problem,  consequently,  is  the  problem  first 
of  securing  for  the  members  of  this  group,  distributively 
and  collectively,  “the  same  rights  and  opportunities 
enjoyed  by  non- Jews,”  and,  second,  of  securing  to  the 
world  “the  full  contribution  which  Jews  can  make  if 
unhampered  by  artificial  limitations.” 

Liberalism,  through  which,  at  the  beginning  of  the 
last  century,  it  was  hoped  both  these  ends  should  be 
realized,  had  failed.  Anti-Semitism  remained,  “univer- 


138  ZIONISM  AND  WORLD  POLITICS 


sal  and  endemic,”  and  the  Jewish  Problem,  with  all  the 
diversities  between  the  conditions  that  determine  its 
manifestation,  remains  one  and  the  same.  The  failure 
of  liberalism  is  coincident  with  the  oppression  of  na¬ 
tionality:  “enlightened  countries  grant  to  the  individual 
equality  before  the  law;  but  they  fail  to  recognize 
the  equality  of  whole  peoples  or  nationalities.  We 
seek  to  protect  as  individuals  those  constituting  a 
minority,  but  we  fail  to  realize  that  protection  cannot 
be  complete  unless  group  equality  also  is  recognized.” 
The  Zionist  movement  is  dedicated  to  the  consumma¬ 
tion  of  this  recognition  for  the  Jews.  It  is  a  movement 
essentially  “to  give  the  Jew  more,  not  less,  freedom;  it 
aims  to  enable  the  Jews  to  exercise  the  same  right  now 
exercised  by  practically  every  people  in  the  world — to 
live  at  their  option  either  in  the  land  of  their  fathers  or 
in  some  other  country;  a  right  which  Irish,  Greek, 
Bulgarian,  Servian,  or  Belgian  may  now  exercise  as 
fully  as  Germans  or  English.”  The  struggle  for  this 
right,  involving  as  it  must  and  does  the  recovery  of 
group  self-respect  and  the  revitalization  of  the  tradi¬ 
tion  and  idealism  of  the  fathers,  is  the  chief,  perhaps 
the  only  bulwark  against  the  demoralization  which 
Jews  have,  since  the  French  Revolution,  been  under¬ 
going  in  America  and  Europe  both,  and  which  yields 
an  excuse  to  the  anti-Semite.  “The  sole  bulwark 
against  demoralization  is  to  develop  in  each  new  gene¬ 
ration  of  Jews  in  America  the  sense  of  noblesse  oblige ,  a 
sense  which  can  be  best  developed  by  actively  partici¬ 
pating  in  some  way  in  furthering  the  ideals  of  the 
Jewish  renaissance;  and  this  can  be  done  effectively 
only  through  furthering  the  Zionist  movement.” 

Zionism,  thus,  is  in  Brandeis’s  view,  the  salvation 


ENTER  AMERICAN  JEWRY 


139 


of  the  Jew  who  elects  to  build  his  life  elsewhere  than  in 
Zion,  no  less  than  of  the  Jew  who  chooses  the  destiny 
of  a  Judaean.  And  not  merely  this.  Zionism  is 
demanded  as  well  in  the  interest  of  all  mankind.  The 
satisfaction  of  these  interests  is  possible  only  through 
organization.  “Organize,”  Brandeis  urged,  “in  the 
first  place  so  that  the  world  may  have  proof  of  the 
extent  and  intensity  of  our  desire  for  liberty.  Organize 
in  the  second  place  so  that  our  resources  may  become 
known  and  be  made  available.  But  in  mobilizing 
our  forces  it  will  not  be  for  war.  The  whole  world 
longs  for  the  solution  of  the  Jewish  Problem.  We 
have  but  to  lead  the  way,  and  we  may  be  sure  of  ample 
cooperation  from  non-Jews.  In  order  to  lead  the  way 
we  need  not  arms,  but  men;  men  with  those  qualities 
for  which  Jews  should  be  peculiarly  fitted  by  reason 
of  their  religion  and  life,  men  of  courage,  of  high  intelli¬ 
gence,  of  faith  and  public  spirit,  of  indomitable  will  and 
ready  self-sacrifice;  men  who  will  both  think  and  do;  who 
will  devote  high  abilities  to  shaping  our  course  and  over¬ 
coming  the  many  obstacles  which  must  from  time  to  time 
arise.  Organization,  thorough  and  complete,  can  alone 
develop  such  men  and  the  necessary  support.” 

“Organize,  organize,  organize,  until  every  Jew  in 
America  must  stand  up  and  be  counted — counted  with 
us — or  prove  himself  wittingly  or  unwittingly  of  the 
few  who  are  against  their  own  people.” 

The  new  leader’s  statement  of  this  position  and 
this  programme  was  made  early  in  1915.  It  was  soon 
condensed  into  the  slogan:  “Men,  Money,  Discipline,” 
that  furnished  the  objectives  of  the  vitalized  fellowship 
of  American  Zionists.  All  three  of  these  were  critically 
wanted  at  the  outset.  Time  has  not  lessened  the  need. 


140  ZIONISM  AND  WORLD  POLITICS 


There  was,  of  course,  nothing  new  in  the  call  to 
organization.  It  had  been  made  many  times  before, 
and  innumerable  projects  had  been  advanced  to 
accomplish  it.  The  novelty  in  this  call  was  the  fact 
that  it  was  effective.  It  was  effective  because,  at 
last,  circumstances  and  the  man  adequate  to  their 
control  were  at  hand  together.  The  European  war 
had  created  a  crisis  not  only  in  the  affairs  of  the  Zion¬ 
ists  but  in  the  affairs  of  all  the  Jews  of  the  European 
continent.  There  had  been  crises  before,  but  there 
had  never  been  before  the  conjunction  of  the  crisis 
with  the  leader  whose  courage,  whose  faith  in  democracy, 
and  whose  organizing  power  could  mobilize  and  bring 
into  useful  action  the  will  of  Jewry  to  meet  the  crisis. 
The  lack  of  such  a  leader  in  1905-06  had  created  a  situa¬ 
tion  which  rendered  the  solution  of  the  problem  of 
effective  organization  particularly  difficult.  It  was  in 
1906  that  American  Jews  became  acutely  aware  of 
the  need  for  united  endeavour  on  their  part,  in  behalf 
of  the  Russian  Jews.  The  occasion  was  the  Russian 
pogroms  of  1905-06.  These  pogroms  rendered  the 
chronic  Jewish  problem  once  more  critical  in  the  minds 
of  all  American  Jews.  The  need  of  their  brethren  on 
the  other  side  called  for  cooperative  action  and  the 
action  was  naturally  initiated  by  the  traditional  leaders 
of  the  Jewish  community.  They  created  relief  agencies 
and  called  for  contributions.  The  response  of  the 
community  was  enormous,  and  when  the  need  had 
passed,  the  relief  agencies  organized  ad  hoc  found  them¬ 
selves  with  a  large  sum  of  money  on  their  hands. 

The  situation  which  had  brought  the  contribution  of 
that  money  had  called  the  attention  of  the  leaders  to  the 
precarious  character  of  the  position  of  the  Jews  in 


ENTER  AMERICAN  JEWRY 


141 


eastern  Europe  and  to  the  need  of  a  permanent  agency 
of  relief  and  protection  which  should  meet  such  crises 
forehanded  when  they  arose.  That  they  would  again 
arise  was  recognized  on  all  sides.  The  agency  there¬ 
upon  formed  was  the  American  Jewish  Committee. 
It  was  formed,  after  some  discussion  of  the  'pros  and 
cons  of  a  possible  democratic  organization,  in  terms 
purely  oligarchical,  with  a  view  only  to  the  probable 
prestige  and  power  of  its  controlling  members  rather 
than  to  their  representative  character.  Democratic 
organization  was  regarded  as  impracticable,  and  it  was 
felt  that  the  intentions  of  the  Committee  rather  than 
the  seat  of  its  authority  was  the  thing  that  mattered. 
This  feeling  seemed,  at  the  time,  of  necessity  justifiable. 
The  gentlemen  on  the  American  Jewish  Committee, 
men  like  the  late  Jacob  H.  Schiff,  Mr.  Louis  Marshall, 
Judge  Mayer  Sulzberger,  had  been  for  many  years  the 
natural,  apparently  the  inevitable,  spokesmen  for  the 
whole  Jewish  citizenry  of  the  United  States.  They 
were  renowned  for  good  works,  for  generosity,  and  a 
genuine  concern  for  the  welfare  and  Americanization 
of  their  fellow  Jews.  The  committee  which  they 
organized  was  acclaimed.  Its  leadership  was  accepted 
without  question,  and  its  service  as  the  Sh’tadlan 
between  the  unripened  immigrant  communities  and 
the  nation  as  a  whole  regarded  as  natural  and  gen¬ 
erous.  This  service,  designated  in  a  charter  of  incor¬ 
poration,  was  multifold  and  varied,  not  always  wise — 
as  in  the  case  of  its  agitation  during  the  Taft  Adminis¬ 
tration  for  the  denunciation  of  the  Russian  treaty — 
but  always  motivated  by  humanitarian  ideals  of 
citizenship  and  brotherhood. 

In  the  meantime,  however,  the  self-consciousness  of 


142  ZIONISM  AND  WORLD  POLITICS 


the  Jewish  masses  was  becoming  intensified.  The 
impact  of  American  institutions  and  conditions  showed 
itself  in  new  arrangements  and  groupings  of  the  Jews, 
in  a  new  intellectual  and  social  vigour  which  is  attested 
by  the  periodical  literature  of  the  interval.  The  whole 
change  may  be  called  indifferently  Americanization 
or  secularization.  So  far  as  the  internal  affairs  of 
the  Jewish  community  were  concerned,  it  showed 
itself  in  a  growing  resentment  against  the  tutelage  of 
the  traditional  Sh’tadlanic  leadership.  Again  and  again 
it  was  expressed  in  bitter  criticism  of  the  American 
Jewish  Committee  and  in  proposals  for  some  form  of 
“representative”  community  government. 

With  the  European  war  these  proposals  were  turned 
into  demands,  insistent,  passionate,  poignant.  As 
slowly  the  news  of  the  atrocities  perpetrated  on  the 
non-combatant  Jewish  masses  during  1914-15  by 
the  Tsarist  armies  and  by  their  Polish  fellow-subjects 
even  more  than  by  the  Teutonic  enemy,  filtered  through 
the  censorship,  a  tremendous  wave  of  feeling  swept 
the  Jewry  of  America.  This  feeling  called  for  more 
than  merely  financial  relief.  The  passion  which 
fathers  and  mothers,  wives  and  children,  brothers  and 
sisters,  were  undergoing  at  the  hands  of  those  who 
should  have  been  their  protectors  could  not  be  remedied 
merely  by  money.  The  community  cried  for  something 
which  should  be  done  collectively,  and  which  would 
make  a  recurrence  of  such  conditions  impossible. 
This  blind  feeling  and  inarticulate  cry  crystallized 
into  a  philosophy  of  group-solidarity  and  group- 
responsibility  in  the  conception  of  a  democratically 
constituted  congress  of  American  Jews.  It  was  a 
chief  item  in  the  emergency  programme  adopted  by 


ENTER  AMERICAN  JEWRY 


143 


the  Extraordinary  Zionist  Conference  of  August  30, 
1914.  It  was  the  foremost  concern  of  a  group  of  vari¬ 
ous  influential  associations  in  the  east  European 
Jewish  community  in  the  United  States.  As  the  jour¬ 
nals  of  the  period  show,  it  was  a  notion  that  met  with 
universal  approval  among  the  masses  of  Jews.  It 
was  a  notion  that  precipitated  and  enchanneled  the 
feeling,  relieved  the  accumulated  uneasiness,  clarified 
the  mind,  and  gave  some  assurance  to  the  faith  of  the 
people.  It  was  a  notion  that  precisely  for  this  reason 
unsettled  the  old  leaders  and  filled  them  with  uneasi¬ 
ness  and  resentment. 

In  New  York  a  group  of  men,  mostly  journalists  very 
close  to  the  pulse  of  the  emotion  and  thought  of  the 
masses,  waited  on  the  executives  of  the  American 
Jewish  Committee  and  appealed  to  them  to  take  the 
initiative,  as  was  proper  and  good,  in  calling  a  congress. 
In  the  attitude  of  the  American  Jewish  Committee 
toward  this  request,  there  became  apparent  the  pro¬ 
found  fission  and  the  caste  war  in  the  community.  The 
members  of  the  Committee  distrusted  the  rank  and 
file.  They  were  afraid  of  the  publicity.  They  were 
afraid  of  having  their  “Americanism”  impugned.  One 
of  them  who  had  publicly  denounced  a  Russian  loan, 
stated  that  the  Congress  must  not  be  held  because 
some  poor,  anonymous  devil  of  a  radical  might  say 
something  about  the  Tsarist  Government  which  would 
then  have  a  very  bad  effect  upon  the  fate  of  the  Jews 
in  Russia.  Others  brought  analogous  objections.  The 
class  as  a  whole,  as  may  be  gathered  from  the  texts  of 
periodicals  like  the  American  Hebrew  and  the  various 
weeklies  edited  by  rabbis  of  the  Reform  sect,  show  dis¬ 
trust  of  democracy,  fear  of  frankness,  a  consciousness 


144  ZIONISM  AND  WORLD  POLITICS 


of  moral  and  social  insecurity;  show  themselves  living 
under  the  dread  of  anti-Semitism.  They  insisted  that 
whatever  could  be  done,  could  be  done  quietly,  by 
wire  pulling,  by  use  of  the  influence  of  individuals,  by 
the  back-stairs  method  of  the  Sh’tadlan  of  the  Middle 
Ages  and  of  the  Russian  Ghetto. 

The  issue  was  joined  with  recriminations  on  both 
sides.  The  Zionist  programme,  the  Zionists  having 
been  with  the  radical  leaders  in  the  Congress  movement, 
became  an  item  of  contention.  It  was  argued  that 
the  Zionists  were  trying  to  create  the  Congress  for  their 
own  purposes.  It  was  retorted  that  there  was  a  pro- 
German  bias  in  the  American  Jewish  Committee. 
All  sorts  of  things  were  argued.  But  the  one  thing 
which  was  really  fundamental  in  the  quarrel  over  the 
Congress  was  the  fact  that  it  was  a  struggle  between 
Americanism  and  medisevalism,  between  a  democra¬ 
tized  Jewry  and  a  traditional  Jewish  oligarchy. 
This  struggle,  old  as  the  Jewish  community,  had  finally 
been  precipitated  in  the  Congress  issue  and  was  being 
fought  out  to  the  end.  One  great  Jewish  organization 
after  another — fraternal  order,  synagogue,  cultural 
society,  and  so  on — declared  adherence  to  the  Congress 
movement.  Nothing  was  so  conspicuous  as  the  fact 
that  it  was  a  self-conscious  mass  movement,  with 
democratic  postulates  and  programme. 

Complications  developed,  however,  in  connection 
with  what  was  technically  known — only  technically — as 
the  “labour”  group.  The  character  of  the  Jewish 
workingmen  has  been  such  that  the  Jewish  labour 
class  and  the  Jewish  labour  organization  tended  to  be 
of  a  very  unstable  composition.  There  is  hardly  a 
union  which  retains  a  moiety  of  the  same  membership 


ENTER  AMERICAN  JEWRY 


145 


seven  years  running.  The  only  part  of  any  union 
or  other  form  of  association  of  workingmen  that  tends 
to  be  permanent  is  the  paid  administrative  organiza¬ 
tion,  that  is,  the  group  of  “labour  leaders.”  This 
fact  adds  to  the  existing  economic  classes  a  new  class 
having  a  curious  and  a  distinct  set  of  interests  as  be¬ 
tween  the  labourers  as  such  and  the  capitalists  as  such. 
This  is  the  class  of  the  labour  leader — not  the  actual 
heads  of  unions — but  the  journalistic  theorists  who 
are  professional  labourites  and  who  manage  the  affairs 
of  the  non-industrial,  beneficial  associations  of  working¬ 
men.  Although  these  workingmen’s  groups  had  given 
their  officials  a  mandate  to  participate  in  the  movement 
of  the  organization  of  a  democratic  congress,  the 
leaders,  considering  their  own  biases  and  interests, 
interpreted  the  mandate  to  suit  themselves,  and  dick¬ 
ered  with  the  American  Jewish  Committee.  The  result 
was  a  split  alignment  within  the  labour  groups  and 
dissension  whose  tendency  is  toward  complete  division. 

Apart  from  that,  the  Congress  movement  swept  the 
country.  There  was  established  a  Congress  Organiza¬ 
tion  Committee,  of  which  Mr.  Justice  Brandeis  was 
made  the  honorary  head.  Plans  for  organization 
were  set  in  motion.  The  Organization  Committee 
made  every  effort  to  come  to  some  agreement  with 
the  American  Jewish  Committee  and  its  allied  groups, 
most  of  them  under  its  control.  When  it  seemed  that 
popular  sentiment  was  overwhelmingly  in  favour  of 
the  Congress  movement,  the  American  Jewish  Com¬ 
mittee  conceded  the  democratic  plans,  and  that  con¬ 
stitutes  the  fundamental  victory  for  modernism  in 
Jewish  communal  life  in  America.  But  the  concession 
of  principle  and  its  application  in  action  are  two  differ- 


146  ZIONISM  AND  WORLD  POLITICS 


ent  things.  The  Congress  Committee,  in  spite  of 
prolonged  negotiations,  found  that  it  could  come  to  no 
adjustment  with  the  American  Jewish  Committee. 
Finally,  it  gave  up  trying,  and  called  a  conference  of 
all  the  great  Jewish  organizations  of  the  country  in 
Philadelphia  on  March  26,  1916.  The  delegates 

to  that  conference  represented  from  a  million  and  a 
half  to  two  million  Jewish  souls,  from  all  classes  of 
society.  They  sat  for  two  days  and  formulated  a 
programme  which  received  the  endorsement  and  ap¬ 
proval  of  many  officials  of  the  Government  of  the 
United  States,  notably  the  Secretary  of  War. 

The  Philadelphia  programme  involved  considera¬ 
tion  not  only  of  the  issues  brought  into  the  foreground 
by  the  war,  but  of  the  perennial  problems  of  which 
the  Jewish  question  is  constituted.  It  aimed  to  provide 
for  a  permanent  organization  of  American  Jewry  on  a 
democratic  basis,  for  a  consideration  of  the  questions 
and  problems  of  migration,  and  so  on.  The  character 
of  the  Conference  and  its  programme  were  hailed 
with  enthusiastic  approval  all  over  the  country.  The 
commissions  and  committees  the  programme  called 
for  were  appointed  and  set  to  work.  Particularly 
interesting  were  the  problems  of  the  committees  on 
Representation  and  Elections  and  on  Permanency 
of  Organization.  But  before  these  committees  and 
the  others  had  time  to  get  under  way,  the  effects  of 
the  Conference  made  themselves  felt  in  the  opposite 
camp,  and  resulted  in  their  calling  a  conference  which 
was  to  talk  over  the  question  of  the  Congress  anew. 
That  conference,  which  was  called  in  July,  1916,  was  com¬ 
posed  chiefly  of  the  members  of  the  American  Jewish 
Committee  and  its  allied  organizations  and  of  the 


ENTER  AMERICAN  JEWRY 


147 


Conference  of  Reform  Rabbis.  That  conference  also, 
though  not  without  much  division  and  bitterness, 
endorsed  the  Congress  movement  and  opened  negotia¬ 
tions  with  the  new  Congress  Organization  Committee 
established  by  the  Philadelphia  Conference,  to  find 
some  modus  vivendi.  The  first  compromise  involved 
the  surrender  of  the  democratic  principle,  and  by  ref¬ 
erendum  was  rejected.  Finally,  a  second  compromise 
was  attained  and  submitted  by  the  Congress  Organiza¬ 
tion  Committee  to  referendum.  The  result  of  the 
referendum  was  acceptance  of  the  compromise.  The 
compromise  was  then  formulated  as  the  call  to  the 
Congress,  viz.: 


By  virtue  of  the  authority  vested  in  us,  as  the  Execu¬ 
tive  Committee  for  an  American  Jewish  Congress,  the 
Jews  of  America  are  earnestly  requested  to  select  represen¬ 
tatives  to  an  American  Jewish  Congress  which  shall  meet 
exclusively  for  the  purpose  of  defining  methods  whereby, 
in  cooperation  with  the  Jews  of  the  world,  full  rights 
may  be  secured  for  the  Jews  of  all  lands  and  all  laws  dis¬ 
criminating  against  them  may  be  abrogated.  It  being 
understood  that  the  phrase  “full  rights”  is  deemed  to 
include : 

1.  Civil,  religious,  and  political  rights,  and  in  addi¬ 
tion  thereto 

2.  Wherever  the  various  peoples  of  any  land  are  or 
may  be  recognized  as  having  rights  as  such,  the  conferring 
upon  the  Jewish  people  of  the  land  affected,  of  like  rights, 
if  desired  by  them,  as  determined  by  the  Congress. 

3.  The  securing  and  protection  of  Jewish  rights  to 
Palestine. 

4.  The  question  of  the  economic  reconstruction  of  the 
Jewish  communities  in  the  war  zone. 

No  resolution  shall  be  introduced,  considered,  or  acted 
upon  at  the  Congress  which  shall  in  any  way  support 


148  ZIONISM  AND  WORLD  POLITICS 


or  tend  to  commit  the  Congress  as  a  body,  or  any  of  its 
delegates  or  any  of  the  communities  or  organizations 
which  shall  be  represented  therein,  to  the  adoption, 
recognition,  or  endorsement  of  any  general  theory  or  phi¬ 
losophy  of  Jewish  life,  or  any  theoretical  principle  of  a 
racial,  political,  economic,  or  religious  character,  or  which 
shall  involve  the  perpetuation  of  such  Congress. 

The  calling  and  holding  of  the  Congress  shall  in  no 
manner  affect  the  autonomy  of  any  existing  American 
Jewish  organization,  but  in  so  far  as  the  Executive  Com¬ 
mittee  selected  by  such  a  Congress  shall  take  action  for 
the  securing  of  Jewish  rights  as  defined  in  the  Call  for 
such  Congress,  the  activities  of  such  Executive  Com¬ 
mittee  shall,  during  the  period  of  its  existence,  be  re¬ 
garded  as  having  precedence  over  those  of  any  other 
organizations  which  shall  participate  in  such  Congress. 


The  call  exhibits  more  explicitly  than  anything  else 
could  the  fear  and  animus  of  the  old  regime  and  the 
completeness  of  the  victory  of  the  new  settlement. 
It  shows  how  the  Congress  struggle  was  not  merely 
a  struggle  between  modernism — or  Americanism — 
and  mediae valism,  but  just  as  essentially  a  struggle 
between  assimilationist  individualism  and  self-respect¬ 
ing  nationalism.  For  all  practical  purposes  the 
latter  was  at  the  time  completely  victorious.  The 
theories  and  philosophies  and  principles  which  were 
to  be  excluded  from  discussion  were  the  unquestioned 
basis  of  action.  They  were  this  because  action  was 
not  possible  on  any  other  basis. 

The  agreement  was  reached  on  October  2,  1916.  In 
the  interim  plans  for  representation  and  election  had 
been  worked  out  and  these  being  confirmed  by  the 
new  executive  committee  which  the  agreement  ne¬ 
cessitated,  the  elections  were  held.  Three  hundred 


ENTER  AMERICAN  JEWRY 


149 


delegates  were  chosen  by  the  popular  vote  of  both 
men  and  women  and  one  hundred  more  by  the  various 
Jewish  organizations  of  national  scope.  With  the 
elections,  the  rank  and  file  of  American  Jewry  passed 
into  a  new  communal  status.  It  is  a  status  which  has 
still  to  be  made  effective  and  which  in  all  probability 
cannot  be  made  effective  without  a  great  deal  more 
extensive  and  far-reaching  struggle  between  the  strata 
of  the  Jewish  population — a  struggle  that  can  be 
fought  out  in  the  last  resort  only  on  domestic  issues. 
Meanwhile,  a  precedent  of  free  and  responsible  common 
action  for  the  rank  and  file  of  American  Jewry — and 
through  them  for  all  Jewries — has  been  established. 
They  have  publicly  debated  Jewish  issues  as  such. 
They  have  expressed  their  will  at  the  polls  regarding 
these  issues.  They  have  chosen  their  representatives 
to  carry  out  their  will.  The  assembling  of  these 
representatives  as  the  American  Jewish  Congress  was 
at  first  set  for  not  later  than  May  1,  1917.  But  in 
April,  1917,  the  United  States  of  America  entered  the 
war,  and  from  that  time  on  various  circumstances  in¬ 
tervened  to  postpone  the  holding  of  the  Congress  until 
December  15,  1918. 


CHAPTER  XII 


ZIONIST  ENDEAVOUR  AND  THE  POLITICS  OF  THE  GREAT 

WAR 

BETWEEN  October  2,  1916,  and  December  15, 
1918,  the  complexion  of  events  had  so  changed  as  to 
require  a  fundamental  alteration  in  the  problems 
and  attitude  of  the  Congress.  The  Jews  had  become 
the  supreme  victims  of  the  war.  No  people  on  the 
battlelines,  except  possibly  the  Armenians,  suffered 
as  the  Jews  had  suffered.  The  war  on  the  eastern  front 
was  being  fought  within  the  Jewish  pale  of  settlement. 
The  treachery  and  incompetency  of  the  Russian  bureauc¬ 
racy;  the  malice,  intrigue,  and  disloyalty  of  the  Poles; 
the  brutality  of  the  Germans  were  alike  cloaked  by 
means  of  charges  and  assaults  against  the  Jews.  More 
than  10  per  cent,  of  the  entire  Jewish  population  of 
Europe  was  on  the  battlefield  and  more  than  90 
per  cent,  of  these  were  engaged  in  the  armies  of  the 
Allies.  But  in  eastern  Europe  it  was  their  ironic 
fate  that  the  battlefield  should  be  nothing  else  than 
the  Pale  and  that  Jewish  soldiers  should  battle  for  the 
Allies  amid  the  familiar  scenes  of  their  own  homes, 
should  be  required  to  burn  and  raze  their  own  com¬ 
munities,  should  be  compelled  to  stand  by  while  fathers, 
sons,  or  brothers  were  executed  on  trumped-up  charges 
and  wives  and  sisters  and  mothers  were  raped  and 
maimed  and  killed.  Thousands  went  mad;  other 


150 


POLITICS  OF  THE  GREAT  WAR  151 


thousands  committed  suicide  or  were  shot  for  insubor¬ 
dination.  Their  homes  and  families,  meanwhile,  were 
broken  up;  great  masses  of  Jews  were  on  various  pre¬ 
texts  uprooted,  evacuated;  their  economic  foundations 
were  shattered  and  their  lives  were  thrown  under  the 
dominion  of  fear. 

And  the  Jewries  of  western  Europe  were  helpless 
to  aid  them.  Aid  was  possible  only  from  the  Jews 
of  America,  during  the  first  two  years  of  the  war  the 
only  neutral  country  with  influence  and  resources 
great  enough  even  to  begin  to  meet  the  demands  of 
Europe  growing  desolated.  Amid  the  great  work 
of  relief  done  by  the  Americans,  the  work  of  the  Ameri¬ 
can  Jewish  Relief  Committee  holds  a  distinguished 
place.  Begun  in  1914,  it  reached  in  the  course  of  two 
years,  under  the  impact  of  the  signal  generosity  of 
Julius  Rosen wald  and  the  organizing  power  of  Jacob 
Billikopf,  unheard-of  proportions  in  scope  and  organiza¬ 
tion  and  still  seemed  the  work  of  trying  to  fill  a  bottom¬ 
less  sack.  The  Jewish  disaster  had  gone  too  deep  to 
be  amenable  to  merely  relief  measures.  It  had  gone 
too  deep  to  benefit  even  from  the  impulsion  of  the 
revitalized  hopes,  the  resurgent  ideals  and  promises  of 
the  Russian  Revolution.  To  certain  Jews,  conspicu¬ 
ously  rabbis  of  the  Reformed  sect,  that  revolution, 
during  its  Kerensky  phase,  seemed  a  God-sent  excuse 
to  enable  them  to  evade  the  responsibilities  of  the  time 
and  the  bitter  draught  that  the  Jewish  Congress  was 
to  them.  With  the  creation  of  the  new  Russia,  they 
declared,  the  Jewish  need  terminated.  The  problems 
both  of  relief  and  justice  were  automatically  solved. 
Of  course,  they  knew  better.  It  was  impossible, 
the  facts  being  what  they  were,  not  to  know  better — 


152  ZIONISM  AND  WORLD  POLITICS 


but  the  occasion  was  too  convenient  to  forego.  Events 
more  than  invalidated  the  declarations  and  shamed 
the  declarants — at  the  time,  the  Revolution  served 
only  to  add  another  excuse  for  obstructing  the  organiz¬ 
ation  of  the  Jews  of  America.  The  subsequent  de¬ 
velopments  in  Europe  wiped  excuses  out  altogether. 
They  aggravated  the  anxiety  and  the  horror  of  the 
Jewish  position — particularly  in  Poland  and  the 
Ukraine.  They  imposed  an  urgency  which,  when  the 
Congress  did  meet,  was  acknowledged  in  the  details 
of  the  programme  it  set  itself  and  the  terms  of  its 
instruction  to  its  delegates  to  the  Peace  Confer¬ 
ence. 

With  regard  to  the  Zionist  Organization  and  the 
Zionist  position  the  changes  were  even  more  radical. 

The  programme  of  organization  formulated  by  the 
leadership  was  one  that  had  to  be  carried  out  against 
almost  insuperable  obstacles.  No  people  in  the  world 
is  so  disorganized  as  are  the  Jews — wherever  they 
find  themselves.  So  in  America  also.  Over  and  above 
the  economic  groupings  and  oppositions  which  underlay 
the  conflict  over  the  Congress,  there  were  literally 
hundreds  of  others,  minutely  diversified,  insidious, 
elusive.  The  common  nationality  of  the  Jews  is 
crossed  and  broken  by  groupings  based — to  mention 
just  a  few — on  sectarian,  domiciliary,  linguistic,  social, 
and  cultural  differences.  Each  difference  tends  to  be 
expressed  in  an  association.  Each  association,  once 
created,  functions  as  a  self-preserving  social  unity 
with  the  attractions,  repulsions,  and  crises  characteristic 
of  the  behaviour  of  such  unities.  Their  impelling 
force  might  in  the  beginning  be  nothing  more  than  the 
anxiety  of  some  petty  villager,  hungry  for  the  sense 


POLITICS  OF  THE  GREAT  WAR  153 

of  security  which  contact  with  the  people  of  the  same 
local  memories,  habits,  and  background  would  give. 
But  organized,  they  became  nuclei  of  accretion  for  other 
interests  and  functions,  with  a  vested  right  in  existence, 
bound  inevitably  to  obstruct  the  consolidation  of  the 
always  potential  larger  groups  or  the  efficient  discharge 
of  their  functions.  For  larger  groups  and  their  func¬ 
tions  are  farther  from  home;  they  are  without  the  com¬ 
pulsion  of  the  visible  and  tangible  elements  of  locality 
and  the  memories  of  the  experience  of  such  elements. 
They  are,,  by  contrast,  thin  and  abstract. 

Both  the  Congress  movement  and  the  Zionist 
movement  were  limited  and  hampered  by  these  local 
associations.  They  claimed  a  prior  allegiance  which 
could  be  overcome  only  through  education  and  func¬ 
tional  displacement.  Thus,  the  Federation  of  Ameri¬ 
can  Zionists  was  made  up,  at  the  outside,  of  “societies” 
whose  members  came  together  for  any  number  of  other 
reasons  besides  the  Zionist,  and  there  was  no  correla¬ 
tion  between  the  strength  of  the  societies  and  the 
strength  of  the  Federation.  Grounded  as  they  were,  the 
societies  functioned  necessarily  as  organs  of  exclusion 
rather  than  as  organs  of  absorption,  so  that  at  its 
strongest  the  Federation  of  American  Zionists  never 
counted  more  than  20,000  members.  To  increase  in 
numbers  it  was  necessary  to  change  the  principle  of 
association,  to  render  the  allegiance  to  the  general 
Zionist  Organization  basic  and  to  the  local  society 
derivative.  It  required  a  change  from  the  federa¬ 
tive  to  the  individual  form  of  organization.  Such 
a  change  could  obviously  not  be  brought  about  at 
once,  nor  could  it  be  brought  about  except  through 
the  pressure  of  an  external  force  which  should  be  strong 


154  ZIONISM  AND  WORLD  POLITICS 


enough  to  loosen  if  not  to  shatter  established  habits 
of  association  and  thinking,  and  compel  the  formation 
of  new  patterns. 

The  external  force  was  present  and  active  in  the  form 
of  the  war  emergency  to  meet  which  was  the  function 
of  the  Provisional  Executive  Committee  for  General 
Zionist  Affairs,  called  briefly  the  Provisional  Commit¬ 
tee.  Created  to  act  until  the  Inner  Actions  Committee 
could  resume  its  duties,  the  latter  found  it  inevitable, 
when  it  did  emerge,  to  confirm  the  powers  which  cir¬ 
cumstance  had  compelled  the  Provisional  Committee 
to  assume  and  to  exercise.  These  involved  the  sup¬ 
port  of  the  Zionist  institutions  in  Palestine,  the  main¬ 
tenance  and  development  of  the  organization  in 
English-speaking  countries,  and  participation  in  the  dip¬ 
lomatic  and  political  activities  which  the  new  problems 
and  conditions  necessitated. 

To  carry  on  this  work,  funds  were  needed,  and  as 
there  was  neither  time  nor  opportunity  to  provide  a 
new  fund-raising  machinery,  the  existing  Zionist 
organization,  such  as  it  was,  had  to  be  used  for  the 
purpose.  This  use  could  not  fail  to  change  the  centre 
of  attention  of  the  membership  from  local  to  general 
Zionist  interests,  nor  to  modify  the  form  of  their  organ¬ 
izations.  At  the  same  time  the  Provisional  Committee 
began  to  figure  as  a  practical  and  efficacious  servant 
of  the  individual  Jew  through  the  creation  of  the 
Transfer  Department,  which  undertook  without  charge 
to  transmit  moneys  to  individuals  in  any  part  of  the 
world  where  the  Zionist  organization  could  reach. 
This  it  did  so  efficiently  that  the  Bureau  of  Disburse¬ 
ments  of  the  State  Department  officially  recommended 
the  Provisional  Committee  to  Jews  and  Gentiles  alike 


POLITICS  OF  THE  GREAT  WAR  155 


as  distributing  agent.  All  the  while,  the  Congress 
agitation  was  going  on,  under  Zionist  leadership. 

These  circumstances,  taken  together,  reenforced 
by  the  tradition  of  feeling  and  aspiration  toward  Zion, 
tended  slowly  to  effect  the  necessary  change  in  habit 
and  thinking.  The  change  showed  itself  first  by 
the  formal  adhesion  of  increasing  numbers  of  individ¬ 
uals  to  the  Zionist  movement  at  large.  Chief  among 
these  was  Judge  Julian  W.  Mack,  of  the  United  States 
Circuit  Court  of  Appeals,  a  jurist  of  note,  a  leading 
member  of  the  American  Jewish  Committee,  and  a  very 
distinguished  figure  in  American  civic  life  and  Jewish 
philanthropy;  he  became  in  the  course  of  time  president 
of  the  Zionist  Organization  of  America.  The  change 
showed  itself,  secondly,  in  the  formal  adoption  of  the 
Basle  Platform  and  the  vote  to  pay  the  shekel ,  of  one 
great  fraternal  organization  after  another.  Coinciden¬ 
tally,  the  forms  and  methods  of  office  procedure,  which 
had  had  all  the  looseness  and  inefficacy  of  a  Talmudical 
college,  were  organized  and  put  on  what  is  usually 
called  a  “business  basis” — “business  basis”  being  an 
ironic  American  euphemism  for  efficiency.  Propagan¬ 
dists,  American,  European,  Palestinian,  were  sent 
about  the  country  to  expound  the  movement,  to  show 
its  relation  to  the  Jewish  question,  and  to  secure  men 
and  money.  By  the  time  of  the  Pittsburgh  Conven¬ 
tion,  June,  1918,  the  change  in  habit  and  thinking  had 
become  adequate  enough  to  risk  a  formal  change  in  or¬ 
ganization.  The  constituent  societies  of  the  Federation 
of  American  Zionists,  the  women’s  society  known  as 
Hadassah,  the  Federation  itself,  and  the  Provisional  Com¬ 
mittee  were  dissolved,  or  rather,  reorganized.  In  their 
place  was  put  the  Zionist  Organization  of  America.  All 


156  ZIONISM  AND  WORLD  POLITICS 


Zionists  were  made  directly  and  individually  members  of 
the  national  organization  and  this  was  divided  into  terri¬ 
torial  districts  from  which  they  elected  their  delegates  to 
the  annual  convention.  This  convention  in  turn  was  to  be 
elected  the  National  Executi  ve  Committee  which  was  to  be 
the  administrative  agent  of  the  Organization  between  con¬ 
ventions.  The  movement  is  now  toward  the  direct  election 
of  the  National  Executive  Committee  by  the  districts. 

The  same  convention  at  which  this  organization 
was  effected  showed  how  far  from  the  starting-point 
the  programme  of  organization  had  led.  The  less 
than  5,000  enrolled  Zionists  of  1914  had  become  150,000 
in  1918,  with  the  unenrolled  shekel  payers  well  over 
200,000.  The  timid  budget  of  about  $15,000  of  1914 
had  become  $3,000,000  in  1918.  The  petition  it  sub¬ 
mitted  in  behalf  of  its  programme  contained  529,000 
Jewish  signatures.  The  negligible  aggregation  of  Ghetto 
shop-keepers  and  intelligentsia  of  dreamers  and  theorists 
had  become  as  large  and  potent  an  organization  of  Jews 
as  existed  anywhere  in  the  world.  The  anonymous, 
powerless  Jewish  society  of  1914  had  in  1918  become  the 
most  influential  in  America,  recognized  by  governments 
as  the  spokesman  for  the  Jewish  people  and  consulted 
on  all  matters  touching  them. 

The  most  important,  though  intentionally  least  con¬ 
spicuous  cause  in  this  change  was  the  leadership  which 
could  inspire  so  great  a  personal  allegiance  and  devotion 
on  the  part  of  a  collection  of  people  hard  to  parallel 
for  diversified  idiosyncrasy  and  individualism  as  to 
overcome  them,  and  to  create  an  unprecedented  unity 
and  intensity  of  action  among  them.  But  the  com¬ 
pulsion  and  opportunity  of  circumstances  were  hardly 
less  influential.  The  institutions  and  communities 


POLITICS  OF  THE  GREAT  WAR  157 


of  Palestine  had  to  be  preserved,  and  to  preserve  them 
required  not  merely  the  organization  of  Jewry  and 
the  collection  of  moneys,  but  negotiations  with  govern¬ 
ments  and  consultations  with  diplomats.  The  suc¬ 
cess  or  failure  of  these  was  ineluctably  a  function  of  the 
aims  and  fortunes  of  the  Great  War. 

Now  the  aims  of  the  war  involved  a  duality — more 
correctly  a  duplicity — created  by  its  fortunes.  The 
disregard  of  international  decencies  and  obligations 
involved  in  the  Austrian  assault  on  Serbia  and  the 
German  invasion  of  Belgium,  and  the  atrocities  there 
committed,  supplied  ground  for  public  and  ethical 
justifications  of  war  which  became  the  organizing  ideals 
of  the  peoples  of  the  allied  countries,  and  the  ruling 
themes  in  the  propaganda  of  their  governments  at 
home  and  abroad.  These  justifications  and  ideals  were 
formulated  as  the  “principle  of  nationality”  or  “self- 
determination,”  “to  make  the  world  safe  for  democ¬ 
racy,”  “to  establish  lasting  peace.”  Brought  forward 
among  the  belligerents  of  the  alliance  to  stabilize 
and  maintain  the  morale  of  their  peoples  and  forces, 
they  were  seized  on  by  the  subject  peoples  of  every  land, 
but  particularly  by  those  of  central  Europe,  among 
whom  they  had  been  vital  and  momentous  for  genera¬ 
tions,  and  were  made  the  basis  for  the  presentation 
of  their  claims  for  liberation  and  independence.  In 
addition  they  were  used  indifferently  by  either  belli¬ 
gerent  to  embarrass  the  other.  But  in  the  United 
States  they  were  taken  at.  their  face  value  and  they 
won  the  sympathy  and  then  the  allegiance  of  both 
the  people  and  the  government  of  the  greatest  neutral 
country.  Consequently,  when  Germany  forced  this 
country  to  enter  the  war  they  acquired  at  once  and  at 


158  ZIONISM  AND  WORLD  POLITICS 


last  the  status  of  primary  and  overruling  objectives 
of  the  combat,  to  which  the  Allies  could  not  but  consent. 

Nevertheless,  behind  these  ideals  and  justifications 
lay  a  complex  of  desires  and  interests  altogether  un¬ 
related  to  them,  in  fact,  their  exact  opposites,  much 
deeper  rooted,  older,  and  more  potent  than  they.  These 
desires  and  interests  had  determined  the  behaviour, 
organization,  and  armament  of  European  countries 
for  well-nigh  half  a  century.  They  had  created  the 
condition  of  competitive  militarization,  commercial 
rivalry,  and  emotional  tension  which  Mr.  Brailsford 
has  aptly  called  the  war  of  steel  and  gold.  They  had 
induced  in  international  relations  a  state  of  affairs 
which  was  nothing  more  or  less  than  a  condition  of 
international  anarchy.  The  usual  name  for  this  con¬ 
dition  is  economic  imperialism.  Its  core  has  been 
the  rivalry  of  land-power  and  water-power  over  the 
control  of  the  eastern  Mediterranean.  The  policy  of 
Britain  with  respect  to  the  Turkish  Empire,  the  di¬ 
plomacy  of  the  French,  the  wars  of  the  Russians,  the 
operations  of  the  Germans,  all  had  had  the  same  end — - 
the  control  or  possession  of  the  eastern  Mediterranean 
and  the  roads  and  highways  of  Asia  Minor. 

The  reason  should  be  obvious.  Asia  Minor,  in¬ 
cluding  Palestine,  is  at  the  juncture  of  the  three  con¬ 
tinents  of  the  Eastern  Hemisphere.  The  Dardanelles, 
and  the  Bosporus  on  which  is  situated  its  greatest 
city,  Constantinople,  are  the  only  all-the-year-round 
outlet  to  the  sea  for  Russian  commerce.  Russia  con¬ 
sequently  has  always  striven  to  dismember  Turkey 
and  to  gain  possession  of  Constantinople.  The  ration¬ 
alization  of  this  striving  is  called  pan-Slavism.  But 
in  this  Russia  has  always  been  frustrated  by  Great 


POLITICS  OF  THE  GREAT  WAR  159 


Britain.  For  to  Great  Britain  the  survival  of  Turkey 
used  to  be  an  insurance  of  the  freedom  of  Egypt  and 
India  from  attack  by  land,  and  of  the  maintenance  of 
her  monopoly  of  transportation  by  water  between 
Europe  and  western  Asia.  To  the  French  the  integ¬ 
rity  of  the  Turkish  Empire  was  necessary  because  of 
the  investments  of  the  French  in  Turkey,  particularly  in 
Syrian  railroads.  Probably  more  than  three  fifths 
of  the  Turkish  loan  is  underwritten  by  French  rentiers, 
and  a  large  proportion  of  the  rest  is  in  the  hands  of 
British  interests.  Now  the  trade  monopoly  of  the 
English,  the  investments  of  the  French,  the  desire  for 
Constantinople  of  the  Russians  were  all  threatened  by 
the  creation  of  the  understanding  between  Germany  and 
Turkey,  which,  as  we  have  seen,  was  the  cornerstone 
of  the  proposed  German  structure  of  Mittel-Europa. 
On  the  basis  of  this  understanding  Germans  received 
in  Syria  and  Mesopotamia  concessions  which  included 
coal  mines,  copper  mines,  and  railroads.  Particularly 
they  included  the  Bagdad  Railroad,  with  a  projected 
terminal  on  the  Persian  Gulf.  The  completion  of  such 
a  road  connecting  Bagdad  with  Berlin  would  have 
created  for  the  products  and  manufactures  of  Mittel- 
Europa  an  all-land  route  to  Asia.  It  would  have  given 
Germany  a  very  distinct  trade  advantage  over  Britain. 
It  would  also  have  put  into  effect  a  very  serious  mili¬ 
tary  threat  against  India.  So  Britain  prevented  the 
completion  of  the  Bagdad  Railroad  by  an  understand¬ 
ing  with  the  Shereef  of  the  Koweit  which  gave  her 
control  of  the  possible  terminals.  But  this  was  not 
enough.  The  German  threat  remained.  And  re¬ 
mained  a  threat  not  only  against  the  interests  of 
Britain  but  of  Russia  and  France  as  well. 


160  ZIONISM  AND  WORLD  POLITICS 


The  three  rivals  over  Turkey  thus  found  themselves 
confronted  with  a  common  enemy  within  Turkey, 
whose  existence  required  them  to  come  to  some  common 
agreement  with  regard  to  the  disposition  of  their 
various  interests  in  the  empire.  Turkish  participa¬ 
tion  in  the  war  on  the  side  of  the  Central  Powers  sup¬ 
plied  the  opportunity  and  the  duplicity  of  the  govern¬ 
ment  of  the  Tsar  with  regard  to  the  continuance  of 
Russian  participation  in  the  war  supplied  the  occasion. 
It  was  hoped  that  the  Russian  bureaucracy  might  be 
bribed  to  keep  up  their  end.  So  accordingly,  in  1916, 
with  the  fortunes  of  battle  going  against  the  Allies, 
Sir  Mark  Sykes,  who  had  been  sent  to  study  conditions 
in  Asia  Minor,  and  had  expert  knowledge  about  that 
part  of  the  world,  was  ordered  to  Russia  in  company 
with  M.  Georges  Picot  to  see  if  an  arrangement  could 
not  be  made.  One  was  made.  It  had  the  form  of  ? 
secret  understanding  by  which  Great  Britain  under¬ 
took  to  abandon  her  traditional  policy  with  regard 
to  the  Turkish  Empire.  The  empire  was  to  be  dis¬ 
membered.  Russia  was  to  receive  Constantinople 
and  her  outlet  to  open  water.  France  was  to  receive 
Syria  and  that  part  of  northern  Palestine  which 
includes  the  Litani,  the  headwaters  of  the  Jordan,  and  a 
portion  of  Galilee.  Great  Britain  was  to  receive 
certain  ports  on  the  Syrian  coast,  namely  Haifa  and 
Acre  with  the  implicated  part  of  Palestine,  the  Tigris - 
Euphrates  Valley,  the  control  of  the  Persian  Gulf, 
and  of  the  Red  Sea.  What  remained  of  Palestine 
was  to  go  under  international  control.  These  arrange¬ 
ments  would  accomplish  the  same  ends  that  the  sur¬ 
vival  of  Turkey  would  accomplish — the  control  of  the 
ways  to  India  and  the  monopoly  of  trade  routes. 


POLITICS  OF  THE  GREAT  WAR  161 


It  would  improve  the  latter,  inasmuch  as  it  would 
make  possible  the  creation  of  short  overland  routes 
between  the  Syrian  ports  and  the  markets  of  Asia 
Minor.  It  would  offset  the  disadvantage  of  the  free¬ 
dom  of  the  Suez  Canal. 

Such  was  the  intent  of  the  secret  Sykes-Picot  Treaty 
of  May,  1916,  to  be  validated  by  concerted  attacks 
through  the  summer  of  that  year  on  the  eastern,  the 
western,  the  Balkan,  and  Italian  fronts.  The  attacks, 
however,  gained  only  ground,  not  victory,  and  the 
sordid  Rumanian  Government,  lured  by  the  promise 
and  hope  of  being  in  at  the  death  and  participating 
in  the  division  of  the  spoils,  entered  the  war  on  the 
side  of  the  Allies  only  to  be  overrun  by  the  Central 
Powers  and  crushed.  Russia  became  less  than  ever  a 
force  to  be  counted  on.  The  people  of  the  allied  coun¬ 
tries  showed  distinct  signs  of  exhaustion  and  war¬ 
weariness.  A  period  of  depression  ensued,  in  which 
feeling  took  form  in  reformulations  of  war  aims,  in 
attempts  at  stating  conditions  of  peace,  in  negotiations, 
secret  and  overt,  toward  peace,  under  the  dominion 
of  a  mood  known  as  “ ‘ defeatism.”  This  mood  could 
not  and  did  not,  however,  influence  in  any  essential 
way  the  habits  of  imperialism.  Russian  disintegra¬ 
tion  had  gone  too  far  to  render  her  government  effec¬ 
tually  responsive  to  the  lure  of  Constantinople.  The 
living  force  of  the  country  had  passed  beyond  its  con¬ 
trol.  Its  economic  life  had  come  under  the  direction  of 
the  Union  of  Zemstvos;  its  political  life  was  moving 
rapidly  toward  revolution.  With  the  defection  of 
Russia  in  view,  the  French  and  the  English  governments 
were  compelled  to  seek  other  alliances,  were  prompted 
to  promise  anything.  They  worked  on  the  Greeks 


162  ZIONISM  AND  WORLD  POLITICS 

and  on  the  Arabs.  They  planned  at  last  an  eastern 
campaign. 

The  work  on  the  Arabs  had  long  been  held  in  view. 
The  Arabs  of  Syria  had  always  been  friendly  to  Great 
Britain.  Already  during  the  first  months  of  the  war  a 
Nationalist  Committee,  composed  of  representatives 
from  Syria,  Arabia,  and  Mesopotamia,  had  been  formed 
at  Damascus.  This  committee  formulated  a  pro¬ 
gramme  of  self-government  and  cooperation  which  it 
transmitted  secretly  to  the  Shereef  Husein  at  Mecca. 
If  he  acquiesced  in  it  he  was  to  negotiate  with  Great 
Britain  for  help  in  its  realization,  in  return  for  military 
support  against  the  Turks.  He  did  acquiesce,  and 
did  begin  negotiations  with  the  High  Commissioner 
in  the  newly  proclaimed  protectorate  of  Egypt.  But 
by  the  time  partial  agreement — sufficient  to  justify 
action — had  been  reached,  the  Committee  in  Damascus 
had  been  discovered  and  crushed  by  the  Turks.  Syria 
and  Mesopotamia  were  unable  to  act.  Only  Arabia 
could  do  anything.  The  bargain  that  was  made  with 
Husein,  through  that  remarkable  young  archeologist, 
Col.  T.  E.  Lawrence,  made  with  the  approval  of  France, 
required  him  to  proclaim  his  independence  and  to  enter 
the  war  on  the  side  of  the  Allies.  In  return,  the  Syrian 
and  Arabian  dominion  of  the  Turk  was  to  be  divided 
into  three  Arabian  principalities:  one,  consisting  of 
Syria  and  Palestine,  under  the  rule  of  the  Emir  Feisal, 
eldest  son  of  the  King  of  the  Hedjaz;  another,  em¬ 
bracing  Mesopotamia  and  the  trade  routes  to  India, 
under  the  government  of  the  second  son,  Zeid;  and 
the  last,  stretching  from  the  Hedjaz  to  the  eastern 
shore  of  the  Red  Sea,  under  the  rule  of  a  third  son, 
Abdulla.  France  and  Britain,  of  course,  were,  withal, 


POLITICS  OF  THE  GREAT  WAR  163 


to  safeguard  their  own  especial  interest — the  British 
interests  being  notably  the  control  of  Irak,  of  the 
provinces  of  Bagdad,  and  Basra. 

This  secret  treaty,  made  after  an  understanding  with 
the  French,  rendered  ambiguous  the  Sykes-Picot 
Treaty.  As  negotiated  by  Sir  Henry  McMahon,  from 
Egypt,  it  had  the  desired  effect  of  bringing  the  Arabs 
into  action  as  reenforcements  of  the  British  operating 
in  Palestine.  It  necessitated  training  them  and  sub¬ 
sidizing  them.  It  left  open,  as  a  source  of  future 
difficulties,  the  unsettled  points,  particularly  the  con¬ 
trol  of  the  littoral  of  Syria  and  Cilicia  lying  west 
of  Homs,  Aleppo,  Hama,  and  Damascus.  Its  im¬ 
mediate  point  was  to  get  additional  man-power,  and 
this  point  was  secured.  But  the  man-power  made 
little  difference.  America’s  entry  into  the  war  in 
April,  1917,  brought  hope,  but  not  hope  of  a  speedy 
decision.  The  strain  due  to  submarine  and  zeppelin 
attacks,  trench  warfare,  undernourishment,  and  casual¬ 
ty  lists  had  produced  a  depression  which  in  diplomatic 
circles  sought  relief  in  ever-new  alliances  and  combina¬ 
tions,  motivated  by  old  imperialistic  conceptions 
of  vital  interests.  The  very  last  of  such  alliances 
which  might,  at  one  and  the  same  time,  remain  in  har¬ 
mony  with  the  publicly  announced  ideals  of  the  war, 
keep  secure  the  interests  of  France  and  Britain  in  the 
Near  East,  and  weaken  the  Central  Powers,  was  with 
the  Jews.  Thus  it  came  about  that  finally  the  national 
aspirations  of  the  Jewish  people  and  the  Zionist  Organ¬ 
ization  received  official  attention  as  factors  in  the 
international  situation. 

The  considerations  which  led  to  this  attention  were 
manifold.  Jews  were  an  influential  part  of  the  popula- 


164  ZIONISM  AND  WORLD  POLITICS 


tion  of  the  United  States.  Jews  played  an  important 
role  in  the  affairs  of  the  Russian  Empire — both  in  the 
finances  and  economic  activities  of  the  established 
order  and  in  the  opposition.  Their  sufferings  and 
persecutions  were  known  and  their  Zionist  hopes  were 
known.  It  was  expected  that  a  pro-Jewish  declaration 
might  help  hold  Russia  together,  or  if  a  revolution 
occurred,  keep  her  at  least  on  the  battleline.  In 
central  Europe  Jews  constituted  a  minority  nationality, 
with  the  same  wishes  and  outlook  as  other  minority 
nationalities.  It  was  expected  that  a  pro-Jewish 
declaration  would  add  another  to  the  groups  of  effec¬ 
tive  disaffection  in  the  Central  Empires.  Probably, 
also,  a  factor  was  desired  in  Asia  Minor  to  offset  the 
force  of  the  Arabs,  should  the  time  ever  come  when 
pledges  and  understandings  had  to  be  made  good. 
It  was  urged  that  a  Jewish  Palestine  would  be  the 
strongest  support  of  British  influence  in  the  East  and  a 
great  addition  to  the  security  of  the  Suez  Canal;  that 
in  view  of  its  racial  linkage  with  the  commercial 
settlements  of  Jews  in  Bagdad,  Persia,  India,  the 
Straits,  Hong  Kong,  Shanghai,  it  would  be  the  chief 
gate  for  the  economic  penetration  of  the  greater  part 
of  Asia  and  a  most  powerful  support  in  the  East  for 
the  British  merchant  and  the  British  manufac¬ 
turer. 

But  this  was  only  half  the  story.  The  imperialism 
of  the  officials  in  this  case  was  reenforced,  within  the 
general  atmosphere  of  the  Christian  tradition  regard¬ 
ing  the  restoration  of  the  Jews,  by  the  piety  of  one 
group  of  Englishmen,  by  the  democratic  liberalism  of 
another,  and  the  literality  with  which  the  masses  of  all 
the  allied  peoples  but  particularly  of  Britain  were  tak- 


POLITICS  OF  THE  GREAT  WAR  165 

ing  the  public  formulations  of  the  objectives  of  the 
war. 

Already  in  1914,  a  professor  of  chemistry  in  Man¬ 
chester  University,  Chaim  Weizmann,  had  of  his  own 
initiative  begun  to  put  the  Jewish  position  and  the 
Jewish  aspiration  before  Englishmen  of  influence 
and  power.  A  man  of  great  personal  charm,  swift  wit, 
and  keen  social  perceptions,  he  received  a  hearing 
which  became  all  the  more  attentive  and  considerate 
after  he  had  performed  for  the  country  a  very  important 
professional  service — he  had  contributed  toward  the 
creation  of  T  N  T.  But  it  was  a  hearing  purely  personal 
and  unconnected  with  the  actual  politics  of  the  interna¬ 
tional  situation.  His  work,  reenforced  by  the  coming  to 
London  in  November,  1914,  of  Sokolow  and  Tschlenow, 
members  of  the  Inner  Actions  Committee,  had  purely  the 
effect  of  preparing  the  soil,  of  providing  conditions  for 
favourable  action,  should  the  occasion  by  some  miracle 
arise.  In  this  he  secured  the  agreement  and  collabora¬ 
tion  of  Messrs.  C.  P.  Scott  and  Herbert  Sidebotham 
of  the  Manchester  Guardian ,  who  organized  the  British 
Palestine  Committee,  and  later,  of  Sir  Herbert  Samuel 
and  the  Rothschilds.  Members  of  religious  groups 
such  as  the  Second  Adventists,  who  saw  in  the  war  the 
apocalyptic  Armageddon  and  regarded  the  restoration 
of  Palestine  to  the  Jews  the  final  preliminary  to  the 
Second  Advent,  were  naturally  sympathetic  to  the 
Zionist  plea,  and  active  in  its  endorsement.  Moreover, 
British  religious  tradition  and  foreign  policy  generally 
were  weighted  in  the  direction  of  favourable  attention 
to  Jewish  rights.  And  Jewish  claims  gained  additional 
prestige  and  picturesqueness  through  the  agitation  of 
Vladimir  Jabotinsky  and  Pincus  Ruthenberg  for  the 


166  ZIONISM  AND  WORLD  POLITICS 


creation  of  a  Jewish  legion  to  fight  with  the  Allies  in 
France  and  in  Palestine.  The  sole  fruit  which  this 
agitation  bore  at  the  time — it  was  frowned  upon 
by  the  Zionist  leaders  and  repudiated  by  the  Organiza¬ 
tion  as  impolitic — was  the  organization  of  the  Zion 
Mule  Corps,  made  up  of  Djemal  Pasha’s  expulsees  and 
a  few  European  Zionists,  and  led  by  Colonel  Patter¬ 
son.  The  corps  distinguished  itself  at  Gallipoli.1 

The  work  of  education  and  propaganda  in  England 
thus  met  with  comparatively  favourable  conditions 
from  the  outset.  Its  great  asset,  however,  was  the 
known  fact  that  the  President  of  the  United  States 
had  come  to  believe  in  the  Zionist  programme  as  the 
solution  of  the  Jewish  question  and  had  promised  his 
best  efforts  in  helping  to  carry  it  out.  It  counted 
heavily  in  Mr.  Balfour’s  consultations  with  Justice 
Brandeis  during  the  former’s  mission  to  the  United 
States. 

When,  therefore,  in  the  depressed  early  months  of 
1917,  Sir  Mark  Sykes,  acting  on  behalf  of  the  allied 
governments,  particularly  of  Britain  and  France, 
opened  official  negotiations  with  Mr.  Sokolow  acting 
for  the  International  Zionist  Organization,  conditions 
were  ripe.  The  negotiations  condensed  the  psycholog¬ 
ical  nebulae  produced  by  the  conferences,  discussions, 
and  propaganda  into  a  programme  of  definite  action. 
Regarding  the  terms  in  which  this  programme  should 
be  formulated  there  had  been  endless  discussion 
between  the  leaders  of  the  movement  everywhere  and 
the  diplomats  of  the  Allies.  They  varied  from  the 
delimitation  of  a  Jewish  state  to  merely  opportunity 
for  immigration  and  settlement.  The  formulation 

lCf.  Colonel  Patterson’s  book:  “With  the  Zionists  at  Gallipoli.” 


POLITICS  OF  THE  GREAT  WAR  167 


had  to  be  made,  so  far  as  the  Jews  were  concerned, 
in  view  of  the  Jewish  position  in  the  politics  of  Europe 
and  of  the  Basle  programme  It  was  a  statement  so 
far  as  the  Allies  were  concerned  that  had  to  be  made 
in  view  of  the  complexities  of  economic,  sectarian, 
and  political  interests  in  England,  in  France,  in  Italy, 
and  in  Asia  Minor.  Sir  Mark  came,  in  the  course  of  the 
negotiations,  to  believe  in  Zionism  and  to  work  for  it 
with  a  fervour  which  has  since  marked  more  than  one 
disinterested  liberal  among  his  fellow  countrymen. 
His  knowledge,  labour,  and  influence  came  to  be  at  the 
constant  disposal  of  the  Zionists.  He  grew  to  regret 
the  terms  of  the  Sykes-Picot  Treaty,  and  after  the 
statement  was  publicly  made  warned  the  Zionists 
that  it  would  be  necessary  to  keep  the  Government 
reminded  of  it. 

The  journeys  of  Mr.  Sokolow  to  France,  to  Italy,  to 
the  Vatican;  the  statements  made  by  Weizmann  and 
Sokolow  in  May,  1917,  to  the  Conference  of  the  English 
Zionist  Federation,  precipitated  a  condition  in  England 
analogous  to  that  in  the  United  States.  On  May  24 
the  London  Times  published  a  letter  signed  by  officers 
of  the  Conjoint  Committee  of  the  Board  of  Deputies 
of  British  Jews  and  the  Anglo- Jewish  Association. 
The  letter  recapitulated  the  philosophy  of  the  “assimi- 
lationists”:  the  Jews  were  not  a  nationality  in  Galuth, 
but  a  sect  dispersed  by  divine  providence  for  salvational 
purposes;  the  Zionists  were  irreligious  enemies  of  these 
purposes;  their  success  would  hopelessly  compromise 
the  Jewish  struggle  for  equal  rights  in  countries  where 
these  had  not  yet  been  attained,  and  would  work 
injustice  to  the  Arabs  in  Palestine,  where  the  Jews, 
in  the  opinion  of  the  Committee,  after  all  had  no  especial 


168  ZIONISM  AND  WORLD  POLITICS 


rights;  withal  they  were  not  opposed  to  the  establish¬ 
ment  of  relief  settlements  in  Palestine.  Immediately, 
the  Times  was  bombarded  with  replies  from  all  sorts  of 
people,  of  all  degrees  of  conspicuity  and  anonymity. 
In  its  editorial  review  of  the  controversy  it  hit  upon 
the  governing  anxiety  in  the  psychology  of  this  group 
of  Englishmen  of  the  Mosaic  persuasion.  Don’t  be 
afraid,  it  told  them;  “ only  an  imaginative  nervousness 
suggests  that  the  realization  of  territorial  Zionism,  in 
some  form,  would  cause  Christendom  to  round  on  the 
Jews  and  say,  ‘Now  you  have  a  land  of  your  own,  go 
to  it!’”  But  this  exposure  of  the  complex  to  the  light 
of  day  did  not  dissolve  it.  Some  eighteen  distinguished 
Englishmen  of  the  Mosaic  persuasion  associated  them¬ 
selves  with  Messrs.  David  Alexander  and  Claude 
Montefiore,  the  signatories  to  the  statement  in  behalf 
of  the  Conjoint  Committee.  Then  the  fat  was  in  the 
fire  indeed.  One  after  another  the  congregations 
supposed  to  be  represented  by  the  Board  of  Deputies 
dissociated  themselves  from  the  action  of  the  president, 
Mr.  Alexander,  and  censured  its  officers.  The  Con¬ 
joint  Committee  was  reorganized  and  subjected  to 
democratic  control.  Although  Zionism  was  declared 
to  lie  outside  its  province,  practically  all  the  constituent 
communities  in  the  United  Kingdom  adopted  resolu¬ 
tions  in  favour  of  Zionism.  The  English  press  was 
practically  unanimous  in  the  same  endorsement.  So 
was  the  press  of  the  United  States.  So — it  appeared 
in  the  course  of  the  next  year — were  the  members  of 
the  War  Congress  of  this  country,  so  was  the  American 
Union  for  Labour  and  Democracy,  speaking  for  the 
organized  workingmen  of  the  country;  so  was  the  British 
Labour  Party.  So  was  the  liberal-radical  government 


POLITICS  OF  THE  GREAT  WAR  169 


of  Russia.  Opposition  came  conspicuously  from  “  assimi- 
lationist”  or  sectarian  Jews  of  a  psychology  similar 
to  that  of  the  members  of  the  British  Conjoint  Com¬ 
mittee.  Outstanding  among  these  were  rabbis  of  the 
Reformed  sect  in  America. 

The  collective  force  of  the  opposition  was  too  weak 
to  have  the  remotest  chance  of  success.  For  once 
justice,  internationalism,  and  imperialistic  interests 
were  in  harmony.  Sir  Mark  Sykes,  aware  cf  the 
conditions  in  his  government’s  contracts  regarding 
the  Near  East,  and  anxious  to  resolve  them,  conceived 
of  an  Arab-Armenian-Jewish  confederation  of  the 
Near  East,  founded  in  mutual  good  -will  and  creating 
together  there  through  industry  and  righteousness  a 
new  civilization  of  culture  and  progress  which  should 
be  a  potent  part  of  the  commonwealth  of  nations  he 
conceived  the  British  Empire  might  come  to  be.  The 
roots  of  the  conception  were  the  needs  of  imperialism, 
of  course,  but  what  roots  are  not,  of  anything  that  lives 
and  grows  and  bears  fruit,  in  carnality  and  earthiness? 
On  November  2,  1917,  after  nine  months  of  conference, 
negotiation,  consultation,  cabling,  and  visitation;  after 
numberless  writings  and  rewritings,  in  wThich  repre¬ 
sentatives  of  the  governments  of  France,  Great  Britain, 
Italy,  as  well  as  the  Zionists  of  America,  England,  and 
Russia  participated,  and  of  which  the  government 
of  the  United  States  was  kept  fully  informed  and  with 
which  it  was  known  to  be  in  full  sympathy,  Mr. 
Arthur  James  Balfour,  then  secretary  of  state  for 
foreign  affairs,  sent  his  famous  letter  to  Lord  Rothschild 
and  the  Zionist  Organization,  which  has  since  been 
known  as  the  Balfour  Declaration.  Both  with  respect 
to  the  form  of  this  letter  and  the  decision  to  issue  it  the 


170  ZIONISM  AND  WORLD  POLITICS 


Government  of  the  United  States  exercised  a  determining 
influence.  Mr.  Balfour  wrote: 

I  have  much  pleasure  in  conveying  to  you  on  behalf  of 
His  Majesty’s  Government  the  following  declaration  of 
sympathy  with  Jewish  Zionist  aspirations  which  has  been 
submitted  to  and  approved  by  the  Cabinet. 

His  Majesty's  Government  view  with  favour  the  establish¬ 
ment  in  Palestine  of  a  national  home  for  the  Jewish  people , 
and  will  use  their  best  endeavours  to  facilitate  the  achievement 
of  this  object ,  it  being  clearly  understood  that  nothing  shall 
be  done  which  may  prejudice  the  civil  and  religious  rights 
of  existing  non-Jewish  communities  in  Palestine  or  the  rights 
and  political  status  enjoyed  by  Jews  in  any  other  country. 

I  should  be  grateful  if  you  would  bring  this  declaration 
to  the  knowledge  of  the  Zionist  Organization. 

The  immediate  effects  of  the  declaration  were  what 
had  been  anticipated.  Greeted  with  general  approval 
by  the  press  and  the  public  opinion  of  the  allied  coun¬ 
tries,  it  became  a  rallying  point  for  the  devotion  and 
the  energies  of  the  Jews  of  the  world.  It  brought  new 
recruits  to  Zionism  and  encouraged  recent  ones  like  the 
late  Mr.  Jacob  H.  Schiff .  It  reacted  immediately  upon 
the  morale  of  Russia  and  the  Central  Empires,  to  what 
extent  may  be  gathered  from  Baron  von  dem  Bussche’s 
commentary  on  the  statement  elicited  from  Talaat 
Pasha  in  Vienna.  All  that  Talaat  could  well  do  was  to 
call  attention  to  the  historic  friendliness  of  the  Turkish 
Government  toward  the  Jews,  to  its  customary  wel¬ 
come  to  economic  and  industrial  development  of 
Palestine,  and  its  necessary  opposition  to  “Zionists 
who  have  political  ambitions  for  Palestine.,,  The 
German  under-secretary  commented  significantly:  “As 
regards  the  aspirations  in  Palestine  of  Jewry,  particu- 


POLITICS  OF  THE  GREAT  WAR  171 


larly,  Zionism,  we  welcome  the  recent  statement 
of  the  Grand  Vizier,  Talaat  Pasha,  expressing  the 
Turkish  Government’s  intention,  ...  to  promote 
flourishing  settlements  within  the  limits  of  the  capacity 
of  the  country,  local  self-government  corresponding 
with  the  country’s  laws,  and  free  development  of  their 
civilization.”  Talaat  had  said  nothing  of  the  sort. 
The  statement  was  a  warning  to  the  Turks  and  a  prom¬ 
ise  to  the  Jews,  as  parallel  as  was  possible  to  the 
Balfour  Declaration. 

But  it  was  of  no  avail.  The  Declaration  accelerated 
the  fission  going  on  in  the  Central  Empires  between 
the  subject  nationalities  and  their  overlords;  in  Ger¬ 
many  the  Zionists  took  an  attitude  which  was  tanta¬ 
mount  to  defiance  of  their  rulers.  To  the  affairs 
and  programme  of  the  Jews  the  Declaration  gave  a 
new  turn  which  no  argument  could  deviate  and  no 
machinations  hold  back.  Almost  synchronous  with 
it  was  the  long-expected  British  invasion  of  Palestine, 
the  conquest  of  Jerusalem,  and  the  liberation  of  Judea. 
And  succeeding  it,  in  due  order,  came  the  public 
official  confirmations  of  the  French,  the  Italian,  and 
the  other  allied  governments,  not  excluding  the  Chinese 
and  Siamese,  while  the  politic  Papacy  was  quick  to 
announce  its  approval.  Among  the  Zionists  the 
Ruthenberg-Jabotinsky  military  programme  was  im¬ 
mediately  renewed  and  with  the  cooperation  of  British 
recruiting  officers,  made  as  effective  as  circumstances 
would  permit.  A  Jewish  battalion  “recruited  chiefly 
in  England,  Palestine,  and  America,”  did  participate 
in  liberating  the  Homeland,  and  was  mentioned  in  the 
dispatches.  In  America,  the  organization  devoted 
itself  to  the  constructive  work  of  assembling  and  or- 


172  ZIONISM  AND  WORLD  POLITICS 


ganizing  and  dispatching  a  Medical  Unit  to  see  to  the 
health  of  the  Homeland,  and  to  the  immediate  ac¬ 
cumulation  of  a  great  fund  to  begin  its  restoration. 
Among  non-Zionists  the  Declaration  became  the 
occasion  of  statements  by  various  groups — depreciation 
and  denunciation  by  rabbis  of  the  Reformed  sect, 
and  by  laymen  also  troubled  with  “imaginative 
nervousness”  regarding  the  security  of  their  status 
and  fortune  in  America;  “profound  appreciation” 
by  the  American  Jewish  Committee,  while  Mr.  Louis 
Marshall  declared,  in  refusing  to  join  a  group  about 
to  organize  to  combat  Zionism,  that  he  would  “regard 
public  antagonism  to  Zionism  .  .  .  as  an  act  of 

treachery  to  the  welfare  of  Judaism.” 

In  Russia  its  effects  were  cut  off  from  development 
by  the  success  of  the  communist  revolution  and  the 
establishment  of  the  Soviet  Republic  with  all  the  dis¬ 
aster  that  to  some  degree  it  created  and  that  mostly 
was  imposed  upon  it.  The  dismemberment  of  the 
Russian  Empire  effected  through  the  treaty  at  Brest- 
Litovsk  dismembered  also  the  world’s  greatest  Jewish 
community  and  threw  the  Jewish  people  of  central 
Europe  under  the  dominion  of  fear  and  in  jeopardy  of 
extermination.  It  brought  Zion  as  the  hope  of  their 
salvation  as  intensely  to  their  consciousness  as  in 
days  of  Sabbattai  Zevi,  with  the  living  difference 
that  followed  from  the  secularism  of  the  Balfour 
Declaration  and  of  the  new  international  attitude 
toward  the  Jews.  It  made  them  more  conscious  than 
ever  of  the  defensive  and  insurance  value  of  explicit 
acknowledgment  in  public  law  of  their  rights  as  groups, 
as  national  minorities  with  a  historic  and  present  func¬ 
tion  in  the  organization  of  such  states  as  Poland, 


POLITICS  OF  THE  GREAT  WAR  173 


Rumania,  the  Ukraine,  and  the  rest  of  lesser  ones 
which  the  treaty  of  Brest-Litovsk  promised  to  let 
loose,  and  the  loosing  of  which  the  final  victory  of  the 
Allies  consummated,  adding  to  them  the  component 
parts  of  the  Austro-Hungarian  Empire. 

Its  consequence  in  Palestine  was  the  enlistment  of 
all  able-bodied  young  Palestinian  Jews  in  Allenby’s 
army.  The  population,  although  suffering  compara¬ 
tively  little  through  the  war,  had  nevertheless  been 
disorganized  and  rendered  destitute  by  the  policy 
of  Djemal  Pasha,  who  practised  evacuations,  levies 
in  money  and  goods,  and  cut  down  plantations,  and 
drove  off  live  stock  and  fodder.  Its  health  had  never 
been  properly  looked  after.  A  concerted  attempt  was 
made  to  work  out  a  programme  of  relief  in  the  admin¬ 
istration  of  which  all  the  sectaries  including  the  Seph¬ 
ardim  joined,  taking  a  solemn  and  formal  pledge 
to  do  all  they  could  44 in  the  work  of  our  National 
Restoration,”  and  the  British  military  authorities 
did  what  they  could  in  the  areas  they  liberated.  But 
the  moneys  needed  were  immense  and  the  problems 
unnecessarily  complicated  so  that  it  was  felt  that  a 
representative  and  responsible  body  of  Zionists  should 
assume  the  task  of  rehabilitation  of  the  Jewish  com¬ 
munities  of  Palestine.  Thus  the  Zionist  Commission 
was  conceived  and  provided  for.  It  went  to  Palestine 
in  March,  just  before  the  last  desperate  German  drive. 
It  went  as  an  international  body,  whose  members 
represented  the  Zionists  and  Jews  of  England,  France, 
Russia,  Italy  and,  indirectly,  the  United  States.  And 
it  went  under  the  sanction  and  authority  of  the  British 
Government.  Officially,  it  was  designed  to  serve  as  a 
body  of  advisors  to  the  military  administration  which 


174  ZIONISM  AND  WORLD  POLITICS 


the  Hague  conventions  prescribe  for  occupied  enemy 
territory  “on  all  matters  relating  to  Jews,  or  which 
may  affect  the  establishment  of  a  national  home 
for  the  Jewish  people  in  accordance  with  the  declaration 
of  his  Majesty’s  government.”  Under  this  commission 
it  was  practically  empowered  to  do  anything  it  could 
within  the  law  to  rehabilitate  Jewish  Palestine  of  pre¬ 
war  times,  and  to  create  the  Jewish  Palestine  of  the 
future.  Its  chairman  was  Dr.  Ch.  Weizmann;  its 
liaison  officer,  Major  Ormsby-Gore.  The  most  dra¬ 
matic  and  spectacular  thing  it  did,  through  Weizmann 
— a  thing  characteristic  and  symbolic  also — was  to  lay 
the  cornerstone  of  the  Hebrew  University  on  Mt. 
Scopus.  The  episode  itself,  baldly  taken,  was  hardly 
more  than  a  rather  ridiculous  gesture,  a  grandiloquent 
flourish;  taken  in  its  historic  context  and  implications 
it  was  the  epitome  of  the  Jewish  bias  for  the  word 
and  the  book,  a  warning  of  irrelevance  and  impractical- 
ity  quite  as  much  as  a  promise  of  sweetness  and  light. 
But  what  makes  it  truly  important  is  the  fact  that  the 
President  of  the  United  States  consented  to  make  it 
the  occasion  of  a  public  reaffirmation  of  the  attitude 
of  the  Government  of  the  United  States  toward  Zion¬ 
ism.  Mr.  Wilson  wrote: 

I  have  watched  with  deep  and  sincere  interest  the  recon¬ 
structive  work  which  the  Weizmann  Commission  has  done  in 
Palestine  at  the  instance  of  the  British  Government,  and  I 
welcome  an  opportunity  to  express  the  satisfaction  I  have  felt 
in  the  progress  of  the  Zionist  Movement  in  the  United  States 
and  in  the  Allied  countries  since  the  Declaration  by  Mr. 
Balfour  on  behalf  of  the  British  Government  of  Great 
Britain’s  approval  of  the  establishment  in  Palestine  of  a 
National  Home  for  the  Jewish  people,  and  his  promise  that 


POLITICS  OF  THE  GREAT  WAR  175 


the  British  Government  would  use  its  best  endeavours  to 
facilitate  the  achievement  of  that  object,  with  the  under¬ 
standing  that  nothing  would  be  done  to  prejudice  the  civil 
and  religious  rights  of  non- Jewish  people  in  Palestine  or  the 
rights  and  political  status  enjoyed  by  Jews  in  other  countries. 
I  think  that  all  Americans  will  be  deeply  moved  by  the  report 
that  even  in  this  time  of  stress  the  Weizmann  Commission 
has  been  able  to  lay  the  foundation  of  the  Hebrew  University 
at  Jerusalem  with  the  promise  that  it  bears  of  spiritual 
rebirth. 

A  month  later  the  victory  of  Allenby  came  to  reen¬ 
force  the  victories  which  Foch  had  begun  to  win. 
Within  another  month,  the  Central  Powers  asked  for 
and  received  an  armistice  conditioned  on  the  terms 
of  peace  formulated  by  the  President  of  the  United 
States  in  his  statement  of  January  8,  1918,  and  in  his 
subsequent  statements,  particularly  that  of  September 
27,  1918.  This  last  statement  was  the  envisagement 
of  an  organization  of  peace  which  should  “express 
the  common  will  of  mankind.”  The  war,  the  President 
asserted,  had  been  a  people’s  war.  The  peace  must 
be  a  people’s  peace.  It  must  be  a  peace  which  should 
render  “impartial  justice  in  every  item  of  the  settle¬ 
ment,  no  matter  whose  interest  is  crossed;  and  not  only 
impartial  justice,  but  also  the  satisfaction  of  the  several 
peoples  whose  interests  are  dealt  with.”  But,  most 
of  all,  the  conference  should  establish  lasting  peace. 
And  lasting  peace  could  be  secured  only  in  the  form 
of  a  league  of  nations.  Agitation  for  such  a  league 
had  begun  early  in  the  Great  War.  Societies  dedicated 
to  its  establishment  had  superseded  the  old  peace 
societies  in  all  the  countries  of  the  alliance  and  in  most 
neutral  countries,  with  membership  recruited  from 


176  ZIONISM  AND  WORLD  POLITICS 


among  the  most  distinguished  and  influential  in  all 
walks  of  life.  In  the  course  of  time  government  de¬ 
partments  had  been  charged  with  the  consideration 
of  its  possibilities,  and  the  preparation  of  a  constitution 
for  it.  It  was  made  clear  that  the  President  of  the 
United  States  was  much  preoccupied  with  its  form  and 
implications,  and  in  this  same  final  pronouncement 
before  the  armistice  he  described  it  as  the  cornerstone 
of  any  peace  that  could  be  lasting,  that  could  guarantee 
the  rights  and  safeguard  the  security  of  national  mi¬ 
norities  or  could  maintain  justice  between  competing 
nations. 


CHAPTER  XIII 


THE  JEWISH  CAUSE  AT  THE  PEACE  CONFERENCE 

SUCH  was  the  situation,  when  at  last,  two  years 
after  the  election  of  its  members,  the  American  Jewish 
Congress  was  finally  convened  in  Philadelphia.  The 
atmosphere  in  which  it  met  and  the  emotional  tone 
which  its  delegates  brought  were  not  of  the  healthiest. 
Repeated  demands  had  been  made  that  the  Congress 
should  be  convened  within  the  two  years’  interval, 
and  the  various  reasons — from  political  crises  to 
official  requests  of  officers  of  the  government — given 
by  the  executive  committee  for  not  doing  so  had  not 
been  regarded  as  satisfactory.  There  were  many 
who  believed  that  the  American  Jewish  Committee 
were  trying  to  void  their  agreement  and  had  chosen 
their  own  special  representatives — events  proved  the 
latter  belief  correct — to  go  to  the  Peace  Conference. 
Others  accused  the  Zionists  of  trying  to  delay  the 
holding  of  the  Congress  lest  it  embarrass  their  own 
special  interests,  so  fortunately  advanced.  Still  others 
feared  for  the  security  of  the  democratic  movement, 
which  must  inevitably  disintegrate  through  heedless¬ 
ness  and  inaction.  All  these  special  concerns  faded, 
however,  before  the  urgency  of  the  times.  The  Peace 
Conference  was  imminent,  was,  in  fact,  unofficially  in 
session.  The  need  and  disaster  of  the  Jews  in  Po- 


177 


178  ZIONISM  AND  WORLD  POLITICS 


land,  in  the  Ukraine,  in  Rumania,  in  the  Balkans,  in 
Morocco,  and  in  Persia  were  overwhelming.  The  Bal¬ 
four  Declaration  was  only  a  promissory  note,  which 
required  to  be  formally  validated  by  the  Peace  Con¬ 
ference. 

The  Congress  sat  for  four  days,  and  each  day  the 
factional  difficulties  receded  farther  and  farther  before 
the  felt  need  for  unity  in  counsel  and  in  action.  They 
showed  themselves  at  the  outset,  in  contest  over  the 
chairmanship,  to  which,  finally,  the  president  of  the 
Zionist  Organization  of  America,  Judge  Mack,  was 
elected  by  a  vote  of  over  four  to  one.  They  showed 
themselves  by  a  demonstration  of  the  Mizrachists 
against  the  spokesman  for  the  radicals,  Doctor  Zhid- 
lovsky,  and  that  culminated  in  the  vote,  moved  by 
the  Mizrachists  themselves,  to  permit  Zhidlovsky  to 
proceed.  They  showed  themselves  in  the  attempts 
to  get  the  Congress  to  vote  its  own  perpetuation  and 
these  were  overwhelmingly  defeated.  The  men  and 
women  of  the  Congress  exhibited  a  good  deal  of  im¬ 
patience  toward  all  these  matters.  They  were  anxious 
to  get  to  the  business  in  hand.  That  was  the  prepara¬ 
tion  of  memoranda,  and  of  resolutions  to  be  based 
on  the  memoranda  regarding  the  problems  and  wishes 
of  the  Jews  of  the  world  in  the  establishment  and  safe¬ 
guarding  of  their  rights  and  liberties.  It  was  speedily 
found  that  the  problem  was  organic,  and  that  the 
numerous  committees  assigned  to  the  consideration 
of  Poland,  Rumania,  Russia,  Ukrainia,  Finland,  Lith¬ 
uania,  Galicia,  and  so  on,  would  have  to  confer  as  a  unit. 
The  upshot  of  the  conferences  was  the  formulation  of  a 
“bill  of  rights”  which  was  to  be  made  the  basis  for 
the  establishment  of  the  Jewish  position  in  each  of  the 


THE  PEACE  CONFERENCE  179 

countries  where  it  was  in  jeopardy  or  doubt.  It  reads 
as  follows: 


THE  BILL  OF  RIGHTS 

Resolved  that  the  American  Jewish  Congress  respect¬ 
fully  requests  the  Peace  Conference  to  insert  in  the  Treaty 
of  Peace  as  conditions  precedent  to  the  creation  of  the 
new  or  enlarged  States  which  it  is  proposed  to  call  into 
being,  that  express  provision  be  made  a  part  of  the  Con¬ 
stitution  of  such  States  before  they  shall  be  finally  recog¬ 
nized  as  States  by  the  signatories  of  the  Treaty  as  follows: 

1.  All  inhabitants  of  the  Territory  of  .  .  .  includ¬ 

ing  such  persons  together  with  their  families,  who  sub¬ 
sequent  to  August  1,  1914,  fled,  removed,  or  were  ex¬ 
pelled  therefrom  and  who  shall  within  ten  years  from  the 
adoption  of  this  provision  return  thereto,  shall  for  all  pur¬ 
poses  be  citizens  thereof,  provided,  however,  that  such  as 
have  heretofore  been  subjects  of  other  States,  who  desire 
to  retain  their  allegiance  to  such  States  or  assume  allegi¬ 
ance  to  their  successor  States,  to  the  exclusion  of  .  .  . 

citizenship  may  do  so  by  formal  declaration  to  be  made 
within  a  specified  period. 

2.  For  a  period  of  ten  years  from  the  adoption  of  this 

provision,  no  law  shall  be  enacted  restricting  any  former 
inhabitant  of  a  State  which  included  the  territory  of  .  .  . 
from  taking  up  his  residence  in  .  .  .  and  thereby 

acquiring  citizenship  therein. 

3.  All  citizens  of  .  .  .  without  distinction  as  to 

race,  nationality,  or  creed  shall  enjoy  equal  civil,  political, 
religious,  and  national  rights,  and  no  laws  shall  be  enacted 
or  enforced  which  shall  abridge  the  privileges  or  immuni¬ 
ties  of,  or  impose  upon  any  persons  any  discrimination, 
disability,  or  restrictions  whatsoever  on  account  of  race, 
nationality,  or  religion,  or  deny  to  any  person  the  equal 
protection  of  the  laws. 

4.  The  principle  of  minority  representation  shall  be  pro¬ 
vided  for  by  the  law. 

5.  Members  of  the  various  national  as  well  as  religious 


180  ZIONISM  AND  WORLD  POLITICS 

bodies  of  .  .  .  shall  be  accorded  autonomous  manage¬ 

ment  of  their  own  communal  institutions  whether  they 
be  religious,  educational,  charitable,  or  otherwise. 

6.  No  law  shall  be  enacted  restricting  the  use  of  any 
language,  and  all  existing  laws  declaring  such  prohibition 
are  repealed,  nor  shall  any  language  test  be  established. 

7.  Those  who  observe  any  other  than  the  first  day  of  the 
week  as  their  Sabbath  shall  not  be  prohibited  from  pur¬ 
suing  their  secular  affairs  on  any  day  other  than  that 
which  they  observe;  nor  shall  they  be  required  to  perform 
any  acts  on  their  Sabbath  or  Holy  Days  which  they 
shall  regard  as  a  desecration  thereof. 

To  present  and  urge  this  bill  before  the  Peace  Con¬ 
ference  a  committee  of  seven  was  chosen,  among  them 
Judge  Mack  and  Messrs.  Marshall  and  Wise.  They 
were  further  instructed  by  a  resolution  unanimously 
adopted  “to  cooperate  with  the  representatives  of 
other  Jewish  organizations  and  specifically  with  the 
World  Zionist  Organization,  to  the  end  that  the  Peace 
Conference  may  recognize  the  aspirations  and  historic 
claims  of  the  Jewish  people  with  regard  to  Palestine, 
and  declare  that  in  accordance  with  the  British  Govern¬ 
ment’s  declaration  of  November  2,  1917,  endorsed 
by  the  Allied  Governments  and  the  President  of  the 
United  States,  there  shall  be  established  such  political 
administrative,  and  economic  conditions  in  Palestine 
as  will  assure  under  the  trusteeship  of  Great  Britain 
acting  on  behalf  of  such  League  of  Nations  as  may  be 
formed,  the  development  of  Palestine  into  a  Jewish 
Commonwealth,  it  being  clearly  understood  that  noth¬ 
ing  shall  be  done  which  shall  prejudice  the  civil  and 
religious  rights  of  existing  non- Jewish  communities 
in  Palestine  or  the  rights  and  political  status  enjoyed 
by  Jews  in  any  other  country.” 


THE  PEACE  CONFERENCE 


181 


Although  it  was  expected  that  the  Commission  would 
proceed  immediately  to  Paris,  all  its  members  were 
not  assembled  there  until  March  22.  Various  causes 
had  contributed  to  this  delay.  Mr.  Wilson’s  expressed 
preference  to  meet  the  delegation  or  its  spokesmen 
on  American  soil  kept  a  number  at  home:,  the  need  of 
personal  cooperation  with  the  Zionists  in  London 
took  others  to  England.  The  delay  was  not  without 
value.  When  the  Commission  finally  was  assembled 
in  Paris  it  brought  with  it  from  the  President  of  the 
United  States  assurances  of  his  unchanging  sympathy 
with  “the  incontestable  principle  of  the  right  of  the 
Jewish  people  everywhere  to  equality  of  status,” 
and  of  a  reaffirmation  of  his  approval  of  the  Balfour 
Declaration  and  his  conviction  “that  the  allied  nations, 
with  the  fullest  concurrence  of  our  Government  and 
people,  are  agreed  that  in  Palestine  shall  be  laid  the 
foundation  of  a  Jewish  Commonwealth.” 

The  two  declarations,  added  to  the  fact  that  the 
Commission  was  the  freely  and  publicly  chosen  spokes¬ 
man  of  the  most  prosperous  and  most  powerful  Jewish 
community  in  the  world,  secured  for  the  Commission 
a  status  among  the  representatives  of  Jewry  in  Paris 
which  was  all  the  more  needful  if  its  task  were  to  be 
adequately  performed. 

The  first  of  these  tasks  was  to  establish  some  degree 
of  unanimity  and  cooperation  among  these  representa¬ 
tives  themselves.  From  the  time  of  their  assembling 
they  had  been  gathered  in  varied  and  opposing  groups, 
broadly  reducible  to  two.  One,  later  constituting  the 
Committee  of  Jewish  Delegations  to  the  Peace  Con¬ 
ference,  had  been  democratically  established  and  was 
representative  of  the  rank  and  file  of  the  Jewries  of  the 


182  ZIONISM  AND  WORLD  POLITICS 


world.  The  other,  representing  the  Joint  Foreign 
Committee  of  the  Board  of  Deputies  and  the  Anglo- 
Jewish  Association  of  Great  Britain  and  the  Alliance 
Israelite  Universelle  of  France,  stood  not  so  much  for  a 
class  as  for  a  certain  philosophy  of  Jewish  life  and 
destiny — already  commented  on — which  had  been 
formulated  as  an  apologia  for  the  persistence  of  certain 
groups  of  Jews  as  Jews. 

The  Committee  of  Jewish  Delegations  was  the  out¬ 
come  of  the  attempt  made  by  the  Copenhagen  Office 
of  the  world  Zionist  Organization  soon  after  the  armis¬ 
tice  to  call  a  conference  in  Switzerland  of  the  repre¬ 
sentatives  of  the  Jewish  National  Councils — created 
through  the  contagion  of  the  Congress  Movement  in 
America — in  Russia,  Poland,  Ukrainia,  East  Galicia, 
West  Galicia,  German  Austria,  Czecho-Slovakia,  Bu- 
kowina  together  with  other  organizations  of  national 
scope.  The  outlook  and  interests  of  its  constituent 
groups  derived  not  merely  from  the  concrete  and  often 
extravagant  nationalist  philosophy  with  which  they 
were  imbued,  but  from  the  poignant  immediacy  of 
experience  and  suffering  and  sentiment  of  the  unhappy 
communities  whom  they  represented. 

Both  groups  were  too  near  their  special  problems 
to  attain  a  proper  perspective  of  thought  and  emotion 
with  regard  to  them,  to  think  them  in  any  but  dis- 
proportioned  terms.  Both  suffered  from  an  “im¬ 
aginative  nervousness” — the  Englishmen  and  French¬ 
men  of  the  Mosaic  persuasion  from  the  pathoformic 
fear  of  endangering  their  dearly  won  and  dearly 
maintained  status;  the  Jews  of  central  Europe  from 
the  similar  fear  of  never  attaining  to  any  freedom  and 
security  at  all. 


THE  PEACE  CONFERENCE 


183 


Under  the  stressful  conditions  of  the  Peace  Confer¬ 
ence  at  Paris  an  enchannelment  of  emotions  of  so  great 
a  polarity  into  a  pattern  of  common  and  united  action 
was  impossible.  Nevertheless,  the  Commission  from 
America  promptly  charged  itself  with  this  task.  To 
the  advantage  of  its  prestige  it  added  the  advantage 
of  its  point  of  view.  Its  outlook  on  the  Jewish  problem 
was  the  echo  and  homologue  of  the  general  American 
outlook  on  the  world-problem:  an  outlook  resting  upon 
an  active  and  even  intense  sympathy  and  idealism 
cooled  and  reduced  to  measure  and  objectivity  by  the 
detachment  of  distance  and  the  healthy,  secure  life  of 
the  Jewish  communities  of  America.  It  possessed  like 
the  American  delegation  to  the  Peace  Conference  an 
almost  perfect  equipment  for  the  work  of  conciliation. 
Unlike  the  American  delegation,  it  was  able  to  use  its 
equipment.  That  it  did  not  succeed  was  not  its  fault: 
force  alone,  not  persuasion,  could,  under  the  circum¬ 
stances,  have  succeeded.  But  it  laid  a  foundation. 
It  held,  under  the  devoted  leadership  of  Mr.  Louis 
Marshall,  conference  after  conference  in  the  attempt 
at  reducing  the  various  committees  into  a  single  one, 
or  failing  that,  of  preventing  public  warfare  and  secur¬ 
ing  public  cooperation.  On  the  surface  it  seemed  as 
if  the  Commission  might  gain  its  ends,  particularly 
with  the  representatives  of  the  Conjoint  Committee, 
upon  whom  the  general  English  outlook  naturally 
had  considerable  influence.  A  Conference  Committee 
was  created  and  charged  with  the  task  of  formulating 
a  joint  memorial  on  the  Jewish  position  and  the  rights 
of  the  Jews.  But  after  many  consultations,  the  “im¬ 
aginative  nervousness,”  mostly  of  the  French  Mosaists, 
prevented  union.  Having  conceded  the  thing  in- 


184  ZIONISM  AND  WORLD  POLITICS 

volved  in  “national  rights,”  they  balked  at  the  phrase 
that  touched  off  the  emotional  and  associative  reactions 
which  had  been  initiated  by  the  generation  that  Na¬ 
poleon’s  Sanhedrin  of  1807  had  spoken  for,  and  the 
reactions  created  an  imponderable  but  impassable 
barrier  to  agreement.  All  that  the  English-French 
group  could  be  persuaded  to  assent  to  was  to  refrain 
from  taking  hostile  measures  against  any  representa¬ 
tions  regarding  “national  rights”  which  the  Com¬ 
mittee  of  Jewish  Delegations  might  make.  Even 
this  grudging  and  oral  agreement  they  could  not — so 
great  was  their  anxiety — successfully  keep. 

Meanwhile,  the  Committee  of  Jewish  Delegations, 
at  its  headquarters  in  the  Zionist  offices,  had  organized, 
with  the  head  of  the  American  Commission,  Judge 
Julian  W.  Mack  as  its  first  chairman,  and  when  he 
was  compelled  to  return  to  the  United  States,  with 
Mr.  Louis  Marshall  as  his  successor,  and  Mr.  Leo 
Motzkin,  former  head  of  the  Copenhagen  Office,  as 
its  permanent  secretary.  The  Delegations  held  con¬ 
tinuous  sessions.  Their  problem  was  so  to  phrase 
their  memorial  to  the  Peace  Conference  as  to  secure 
the  substance  of  justice  to  the  Jews,  individually 
and  collectively,  without  at  the  same  time  adding  to 
the  burden  of  misunderstanding,  ill-will,  and  enmity 
which  had  been  the  people’s  traditional  lot.  From 
the  start  it  was  agreed  that  the  basis  of  any  memoran¬ 
dum  should  be  the  Jewish  Bill  of  Rights  adopted  by 
the  American  Jewish  Congress.  But  concerning  the 
details  and  formulae  there  was  a  difference  of  opinion 
among  the  American  commissioners  also.  However, 
the  facts  and  specifications  of  the  representatives 
of  the  Jewries  of  central  Europe  and  Russia  were 


THE  PEACE  CONFERENCE 


185 


coercive:  they  made  clear  to  both  the  most  clerical 
and  most  legalistic  of  the  Americans  that  for  the  Jews 
of  the  new  states  of  Europe  civil  equality  without 
national  rights  was  a  delusion  and  a  myth.  On  May 
10,  1919,  a  memorial  was  unanimously  adopted  by  the 
Committee  and  later  deposited  with  the  secretary  of 
the  Peace  Conference.  The  phrase  “national  rights” 
remained  a  stumbling-block,  nevertheless.  Adopted 
in  principle  by  the  Peace  Conference,  the  treaty  with 
Poland  designates  the  concept  “national  rights” 
by  the  circumlocution  “rights  of  minorities  differing 
from  the  majority  in  race,  language,  or  religion.” 
Otherwise,  the  treaty  follows  the  principles  laid  down 
in  the  Bill  of  Rights  of  the  American  Jewish  Congress 
and  the  memorial  of  the  Committee  of  Jewish  Delega¬ 
tions.  These  were  provided  for  also  in  the  treaties 
with  Czechoslovakia,  Rumania,  Jugo-Slavia,  Hungary, 
Turkey,  Bulgaria,  Austria,  and  Greece.  Poland  and 
Czecho-Slovakia  have  ratified  the  treaties — the  Ruma¬ 
nian  Parliament  has  still  to  act,  and  the  other  treaties 
are  in  varying  stages  of  suspension  or,  if  adopted,  of 
sabotage,  amid  the  chaos  that  followed  the  Treaty  of 
Versailles. 

All  the  treaties  establish  essentially  the  same  things, 
not  for  Jews  alone,  but  for  all  national  minorities. 
First.  That  the  several  obligations  are  recognized  as 
fundamental  laws. 

Second.  That  all  inhabitants  of  the  country  involved 
are  assured  full  and  complete  protection  of  life, 
liberty,  and  property  without  distinction  of  birth, 
nationality,  language,  race,  or  religion. 

Third.  That  all  habitual  residents  of  the  lands  of  a  new 
state  are  admitted  into  the  citizenship  of  that  state 


186  ZIONISM  AND  WORLD  POLITICS 

v  *r**r — ■ 

and  are  secured  in  their  rights  to  adopt  another 
citizenship  if  they  choose  to  do  so,  and  it  be  open 
to  them  to  do  so. 

Fourth .  That  all  members  of  national  minorities  are 
to  be  equal  before  the  law,  to  be  secured  in  their 
rights  of  admission  to  public  employments,  func¬ 
tions,  or  honours;  in  the  practice  of  professions, 
crafts,  or  industry ;  in  the  freedom  to  use  any  language 
for  the  purposes  of  private  intercourse,  commerce, 
religion,  publication,  and  assembly,  and,  within 
reasonable  limits,  in  the  use  of  a  minority  language 
before  the  courts. 

Fifth.  That  racial,  religious,  or  linguistic  minorities 
must  have  equal  treatment  and  security  in  law  and 
in  fact;  that  they  are  free  to  establish,  manage,  and 
control,  at  their  own  expense,  charitable,  religious, 
social,  and  educational  institutions;  that  they  shall 
be  free  to  use  their  own  language  therein,  and  to 
practise  their  religion. 

Sixth.  That  while  the  State  may  make  obligatory 
the  teaching  of  the  State  language,  it  must  supply 
adequate  facilities  also  for  instruction  in  the  lan¬ 
guage  of  the  minority,  and  must  allocate  to  towns 
or  districts  where  appreciable  proportions  of  such 
a  minority  reside  an  equitable  share  of  the  monies 
provided  through  state,  municipal,  or  other  budgets 
for  the  purpose  of  cult,  charity,  or  education. 

Seventh .  That  the  Jewish  minorities  may,  subject 
to  general  control  of  the  State,  provide,  through 
the  action  of  their  local  communities,  committees 
which  shall  receive,  distribute,  and  administer  the 
monies  so  set  aside,  for  the  purpose  designated. 

Eighth.  That  the  Jewish  minority  shall  have  the  full 


THE  PEACE  CONFERENCE 


187 


right  to  observe  their  Sabbath;  that  they  shall  not 
be  required  to  attend  court  or  perform  other  legal 
business  on  that  day;  that  the  State  shall  not  order 
or  permit  to  be  ordered  local  or  general  elections,  or 
registration  for  election  or  other  purposes  on  that  day.1 
Ninth.  That  the  State  recognizes  and  acknowledges 
the  obligations  regarding  members  of  racial,  lin¬ 
guistic,  or  religious  minorities  as  obligations  of 
international  concern  guaranteed  by  the  League 
of  Nations;  that  the  State  recognizes  and  acknowl¬ 
edges  the  right  and  duty  of  any  member  of  the  Coun¬ 
cil  of  the  League  to  bring  to  the  Council’s  attention  any 
infraction  of  these  obligations,  and  that  the  Council 
is  to  take  action  upon  each  infraction.  That  the 
State  agrees  that  differences  of  opinion  between 
the  State  and  any  other  member  of  the  League  on 
these  matters  shall  be  held  to  be  a  dispute  of  interna¬ 
tional  character  under  Article  14  of  the  Covenant 
of  the  League  of  Nations  and  that  the  questions  of 
law  or  fact  involved  in  it  shall  upon  the  demand 
of  either  party  be  referred  to  the  permanent  Court 
of  International  Justice,  whose  decision  shall  be  final 
and  shall  have  the  same  force  and  effect  as  an 
award  under  Article  13  of  the  Covenant.  .  .  . 

So  the  age-old  problem  of  the  rights  of  national 
minorities  was  met,  and  met  for  all  minorities,  by 
the  one  that  had  suffered  longest  and  most  terribly 
through  its  disinherited  status.  The  ninth  of  the 
provisions  here  summarized  constitutes  the  public 
and  formal  acknowledgment  of  the  fact  of  nationality 
and  the  incorporation  of  its  principle  into  the  law  of 
nations.  Amid  so  much  that  was  evil  and  re  tro¬ 


che  Seventh  and  Eighth  points  are  explicit  only  in  the  Polish  treaty. 


188  ZIONISM  AND  WORLD  POLITICS 


gressive  in  the  action  at  Versailles  this  one  thing,  for 
which  America,  official  and  unofficial,  deserves  the 
lion’s  share  of  the  credit,  stands  out  as  to  some  degree 
uttering  and  fulfilling  the  hope  and  the  vision  with 
which  the  free  and  the  humane  men  of  the  world  had 
looked  to  the  Peace  Conference. 

Yet  it  does  not  in  reality  stick  out  from  the  picture. 
It  is  a  conclusion,  not  a  beginning.  The  same 
nineteenth-century  spirit  and  outlook  which  underlay 
the  rest  of  the  work  at  Versailles  underlies  this  also. 
It  consummates  in  law,  and  thus  lays  the  foundation 
for  that  change  of  habit  in  which  will  consist  the  con¬ 
summation  in  fact,  of  a  process  of  group-rearrange¬ 
ments  whose  collective  tendency  we  have  observed 
as  “the  principle  of  nationality.”  It  is  worth  while 
repeating  that  by  and  large  the  effect  of  the  recogni¬ 
tion  and  application  of  the  principle  must  be  to  remove 
it  from  the  field  of  political  contention  and  to  permit 
the  freer  coming  into  the  focus  of  attention  of  those 
other  problems  of  grouping  which  were  born  with  the 
industrialization  of  the  western  world. 

How  rapid  or' how  slow  this  change  is  likely  to  be  de¬ 
pends  entirely  on  the  organization  of  the  minorities  and 
their  power  to  make  their  rights  so  effective  as  to  be  no 
longer  subject  to  contention.  To-day  the  law  is  still  a 
scrap  of  paper,  a  promissory  note,  with  the  League  of  Na¬ 
tions,  its  guarantor,  barely  showing  a  head  out  of  limbo 
and  the  minorities  too  disabled  to  make  themselves  felt. 

When,  however,  the  law  was  being  thought  out  and 
urged,  hopes  were  high,  and  upon  its  adoption  in 
principle  and  form  for  incorporation  into  all  treaties, 
gratulation  was  not  unnaturally  extensive,  particularly 
among  the  Jews.  One  half  of  their  problem  had  been 


THE  PEACE  CONFERENCE 


189 


solved,  so  far  as  debate,  legislation,  and  the  pledged 
honour  of  diplomats  could  be  regarded  a  solution. 
There  remained  the  other  half — the  incorporation 
of  the  Balfour  Declaration  into  public  law.  The  man¬ 
date  from  the  American  Jewish  congress  was  explicit 
and  the  will  of  the  Jewries  of  central  Europe  was 
no  less  known  and  resolute.  The  Committee  of  Jewish 
Delegations  again  acted  unanimously.  On  July  10, 
1919,  its  members  unanimously  adopted  a  resolution 
to  present  to  the  Peace  Conference  a  memorial  regard¬ 
ing  Jewish  claims  to  Palestine.  The  presentation 
did  not,  however,  take  place  until  long  after  the  Zionist 
Organization  and  the  Jewish  population  of  Palestine, 
acting  jointly,  had  filed  their  own  independent  memo¬ 
rial,  and  the  spokesmen  of  the  Zionists — Messrs.  Weiz- 
mann,  Sokolow,  Ussishkin,  and  Andre  Spire — had  been 
heard  by  the  Council  of  Ten.  Sylvain  Levi,  on  behalf 
of  the  Alliance  Israelite,  appeared  in  opposition. 

Had  this  opposition  been  the  only  opposition  the 
end  of  the  matter  would  have  been  simple.  But  the 
disposal  of  Palestine  was  conditioned  upon  secret 
treaties,  agreements,  and  counter-agreements.  There 
were  implicated  in  it  interests  of  native  landlords 
and  foreign  concessionaries,  of  foreign  missionaries 
and  native  money-lenders.  There  was,  besides,  the 
swelling  wave  of  nationalism,  to  no  small  degree  arti¬ 
ficially  fostered  by  these  interests  and  maintaining  a 
propaganda  from  Cairo  to  Delhi.  There  was  the  anti- 
Zionism  of  high  British  military  officials,  who  regarded 
the  creation  of  a  Jewish  Palestine  as  impracticable  and 
dangerous,  and  the  resentful  opposition  of  the  Secretary 
of  State  for  India,  an  Englishman  of  more  or  less 
Mosaic  persuasion.  Palestine,  the  military  men  told 


190  ZIONISM  AND  WORLD  POLITICS 


the  members  of  the  Zionist  Administrative  Commis¬ 
sion,  could  be  held  only  by  the  bayonet,  and  no  govern¬ 
ment,  particularly  not  the  British  Government,  would 
undertake  to  hold  it  so  for  the  Jews.  The  briefs, 
memorials,  conferences,  innumerable  and  anxious, 
had  at  one  and  the  same  time  to  seek  delicate  adjust¬ 
ment  to  every  new  phase  of  the  situation  and  yet  not 
surrender  a  tittle  of  the  Jewish  position.  Consulta¬ 
tion  followed  consultation,  draft  followed  draft,  as 
rumour  shifted  and  report  veered.  Finally  a  memorial 
was  submitted.  It  was  postulated  upon  Article  22 
in  the  Covenant  of  the  League  of  Nations  regarding 
mandatories.  The  text  of  Article  22  is  as  follows: 

To  those  colonies  and  territories  which  as  a  consequence 
of  the  late  war  ceased  to  be  under  the  sovereignty  of  the 
states  which  formerly  governed  them  and  which  are  inhabited 
by  peoples  not  yet  able  to  stand  by  themselves  under  the 
strenuous  conditions  of  the  modern  world,  there  should  be 
applied  the  principle  that  the  wellbeing  and  development 
of  such  peoples  form  a  sacred  trust  of  civilization  and  that 
securities  for  the  performance  of  this  trust  should  be  em¬ 
bodied  in  this  Covenant. 

The  best  method  of  giving  practical  effect  to  this  prin¬ 
ciple  is  that  the  tutelage  of  such  peoples  should  be  intrusted 
to  advanced  nations  who  by  reason  of  their  resources,  their 
experience,  or  their  geographical  position,  can  best  under¬ 
take  this  responsibility,  and  that  tutelage  should  be  exer¬ 
cised  by  them  as  mandatories  on  behalf  of  the  League. 

The  character  of  the  mandate  must  differ  according  to 
the  stage  of  the  development  of  the  people,  the  geographical 
situation  of  the  territory,  its  economic  conditions,  and  other 
similar  circumstances. 

Certain  communities  formerly  belonging  to  the  Turkish 
Empire  have  reached  a  stage  of  development  where  their 
existence  as  independent  nations  can  be  provisionally 
recognized  subject  to  the  rendering  of  administrative  ad- 


THE  PEACE  CONFERENCE 


191 


vice  and  assistance  by  a  mandatory  power  until  such  time 
as  they  are  able  to  stand  alone.  The  wishes  of  these  com¬ 
munities  must  be  a  principal  consideration  in  the  selection 
of  the  mandatory  power. 

Other  peoples,  especially  those  of  Central  Africa,  are 
at  such  a  stage  that  the  mandatory  must  be  responsible  for 
the  administration  of  the  territory  subject  to  conditions 
which  will  guarantee  freedom  of  conscience  or  religion,  sub¬ 
ject  only  to  the  maintenance  of  public  order  and  morals, 
the  prohibition  of  abuses  such  as  slave  trade,  the  arms  traffic, 
and  the  liquor  traffic,  and  the  prevention  of  the  establish¬ 
ment  of  fortifications  or  military  and  naval  bases  for  other 
than  police  purposes  and  the  defense  of  territory,  and  will 
also  secure  equal  opportunities  for  the  trade  and  commerce 
of  other  members  of  the  League. 

There  are  territories,  such  as  southwest  Africa  and  certain 
of  the  South  Pacific  Isles,  which,  owing  to  the  sparseness 
of  their  population,  or  their  small  size,  or  their  remoteness 
from  the  centres  of  civilization,  or  their  geographical  con¬ 
tiguity  to  the  mandatory  state,  and  other  circumstances, 
can  best  be  administered  under  the  laws  of  the  mandatory 
state  as  integral  portions  thereof,  subject  to  the  safeguards 
above  mentioned  in  the  interests  of  the  indigenous  popula¬ 
tion. 

In  every  case  of  mandate  the  mandatory  state  shall 
render  to  the  League  an  annual  report  in  reference  to  the 
territory  committed  to  its  charge. 

The  degree  of  authority,  control,  or  administration  to  be 
exercised  by  the  mandatory  state  shall,  if  not  previously 
agreed  upon  by  the  high  contracting  parties  in  each  case,  be 
explicitly  defined  by  the  Executive  Council  in  a  special  act 
or  charter. 

A  permanent  commission  shall  be  constituted  to  receive 
and  examine  the  annual  reports  of  the  mandatory  powers 
and  to  advise  the  Council  on  all  matters  relating  to  the 
observance  of  the  terms  of  all  mandates. 

Pursuant  to  the  terms  of  this  article,  the  Zionist 
memorial  declared  for  Great  Britain  as  Mandatory. 


192  ZIONISM  AND  WORLD  POLITICS 


It  outlined  the  historic  claims  of  the  Jewish  people  to 
Palestine,  designated  proposed  boundaries,  described 
the  existing  and  de  facto  stake  of  the  Jews  in  the  land, 
their  economic,  social,  and  cultural  services  to  it,  and 
asked  for  the  joint  and  formal  validation  of  the  Balfour 
Declaration  by  the  members  of  the  Peace  Conference, 
their  governments  having  already  severally  declared 
their  adherence  to  it.  And  so  on.  At  the  hearing,  the 
Zionist  representatives  elaborated  and  detailed  their 
contentions.  They  made  much  of  the  Jewish  urge 
toward  Palestine,  of  the  bearing  of  the  Balfour  Declara¬ 
tion  on  the  Jewish  tragedy  in  central  Europe,  of  the 
rapidity  and  efficacy  of  the  Jewish  migration  to  Pales¬ 
tine,  if  proper  conditions  and  safeguards  are  established. 

The  designation  of  these  conditions  and  safeguards 
were,  meanwhile  and  afterward,  being  worked  out 
by  an  interallied  Zionist  conference  in  London,  in 
consultation  with  friendly  Britons.  Of  this,  also, 
numerous  versions  were  made.  What  was  definitive 
in  all  of  them  was  the  recognition  of  the  essentially 
economic  character,  once  the  political  guarantees 
had  been  established,  of  the  problem  of  Jewish  settle¬ 
ment.  This  recognition  was  due  preeminently  to  the 
American  Zionists:  they  had  perceived  immediately 
after  the  Balfour  Declaration  the  necessity  of  being 
prepared  with  a  definite  economic  policy,  had  studied 
out  what,  generally,  the  situation  would  demand, 
and  had  formulated  a  declaration  which  was  unani¬ 
mously  adopted  by  the  National  Convention  held  in 
Pittsburgh  in  July,  1918.  This  declaration  was  sub¬ 
sequently  known  as  the  Pittsburgh  Programme.  So 
far  as  possible,  the  Zionists  sought  to  make  the  terms 
of  this  programme  part  of  the  terms  of  the  mandate. 


THE  PEACE  CONFERENCE 


193 


If  accepted,  these  terms  would  render  it  the  obligation 
of  the  mandatory  to  establish  Palestine  as  the  Jewish 
National  Home  and  to  develop  it  into  “an  autonomous 
commonwealth  dedicated  to  the  advancement  of 
social  justice.”  The  realization  of  this  end  would 
require  measures  to  promote  the  immigration  of  Jews; 
to  establish  Hebrew  as  one  of  the  official  languages 
of  the  land;  to  charge  appropriate  Jewish  agencies 
with  the  creation  and  management  of  a  system  of 
education;  to  promote  and  perfect  local  and  municipal 
self-government;  to  provide  for  the  public  ownership 
and  development  of  land,  natural  resources,  and  public 
works  and  utilities;  to  foster  the  cooperative  organiza¬ 
tion  of  all  agricultural,  industrial,  commercial,  and 
financial  undertakings,  and  to  do  all  this  in  progressive 
collaboration  with  appropriate  Jewish  agencies.  Fur¬ 
thermore,  guarantees  of  liberty  of  conscience  and  of 
civil  and  political  rights  would  be  extended  to  all  the 
inhabitants  of  the  land,  regardless  of  race,  faith,  or  sex; 
the  holy  places  would  be  protected,  and  all  members 
of  the  League  of  Nations  or  their  nationals  would  be 
assured  of  equality  of  economic  opportunity.  And 
when,  in  the  fulness  of  time  and  the  judgment  of  the 
Mandatory,  the  inhabitants  of  Palestine  should  be 
capable  of  self-government,  the  Mandatory  would 
enable  them  by  means  of  a  “democratic  franchise 
without  regard  to  race,  faith,  or  sex,  to  establish  a 
representative  and  responsible  government  in  such 
form  as  the  people  of  Palestine  may  devise.” 

The  firmness  and  directness  of  the  formulation  and 
utterance  of  the  Zionist  aspirations  before  the  Peace 
Conference  and  the  Zionist  policies  in  the  terms  of 
the  mandate  by  no  means  represented  the  Zionists’ 


194  ZIONISM  AND  WORLD  POLITICS 


inood.  Behind  their  serene  and  bold  public  front 
there  were  at  work  uncertainties,  anxieties,  fears. 
Immediately  after  the  appearance  of  the  Zionist  delega¬ 
tion  before  the  Council  of  Ten  the  Emir  Feisal — 
who  was  then  in  Paris  to  demand  the  admission  of 
his  country  into  the  councils  of  the  Allies,  among 
whom  it  counted  itself  one — issued  a  statement  resting 
directly  upon  the  arrangement — verbal,  it  is  true — 
between  the  Egyptian  High  Commissioner  and  his 
father.  The  statement  was  in  direct  contradiction  of 
the  Balfour  Declaration;  in  direct  antithesis  to  Feisal’s 
statements  in  private  to  Doctor  Weizmann.  The 
truth  was  that  this  wise  and  on  the  whole  straight¬ 
forward  statesman  was  bewildered  by  the  confusion 
of  counsel  and  contradiction  of  pledges,  by  the  antago¬ 
nisms  of  advisors  and  the  whole  devious  trend  of  diplo¬ 
macy:  he  sought — in  view  of  his  relations  to  Syria  he 
was  compelled  to  seek — a  straight  and  clean  way  out. 
Fortunately  he  was  convinced,  through  the  efforts  of 
Mr.  Felix  Frankfurter,  the  lucid  and  competent  chair¬ 
man  of  the  American  Zionist  delegation — that  Palestine 
was  not  involved  in  the  political  manoeuvring  and 
counter-manoeuvering  over  the  independence  and  se¬ 
curity  of  the  Arab  state.  He  expressed  this  conviction 
in  a  letter  addressed  to  Frankfurter,  in  which  he  deplored 
the  misleading  of  the  Arab  peasantry  and  stressed  the 
traditional  kinship  and  cooperation  of  Jews  and  Arabs, 
their  common  hardships,  the  sympathy  of  the  Arabs 
with  Zionism,  and  the  hope  for  cooperation  between 
the  two  peoples.  He  wrote: 

Our  deputation  here  in  Paris  is  fully  acquainted  with  the 
proposals  submitted  yesterday  by  the  Zionist  Organization 
to  the  Peace  Conference,  and  we  regard  them  as  moderate 


THE  PEACE  CONFERENCE 


195 


and  proper.  We  will  do  our  best  insofar  as  we  are  concerned 
to  help  them  through.  We  will  wish  the  Jews  a  most  hearty 
welcome  home. 

These  statements  simply  reaffirmed  the  sentiments 
he  had  somewhat  earlier  expressed  at  a  public  dinner 
in  London.  There  he  declared  that  “no  true  Arab 
can  be  suspicious  or  afraid  of  Jewish  nationalism,” 
and  that  the  Arabs  would  be  unworthy  of  freedom  if 
they  did  not  say  to  the  Jews,  “welcome  back  home,”  and 
“cooperate  with  them  to  the  limit  of  the  ability  of  the 
Arab  state.”  But  Feisal,  though  the  spokesman, 
was  not  the  ruler  of  the  Arabs,  not  even  the  leader 
of  all  of  them.  Effendis  and  money-lenders  meant 
him  to  be  a  tool  rather  than  a  guide;  and  his  anti- 
Zionist  expressions  had  been  compelled  by  pressure 
in  Paris  and  the  news  of  unrest  in  Syria — unrest  that, 
with  the  postponement  of  the  Turkish  Treaty  and 
the  multiplication  of  rumours,  propaganda,  and  con¬ 
spiracies  which  more  and  more  disquieted  Jews  and 
Arabs  alike,  reached  the  point  in  April,  1919,  of  threat¬ 
ened  anti-Jewish  and  anti-Allied  outbreaks  all  over 
the  Arabian  and  Mohammedan  world.  This  added  to 
the  anxieties  of  the  Zionists.  And  the  event  that  the 
word  of  this  unrest  particularly  impressed  the  experts 
of  the  American  delegation  charged  with  the  definition 
of  the  settlement  of  the  Near  East  did  not  help  to 
lessen  it.  Nor  did  the  way  in  which  spying-out 
commissions  were  planned  and  their  personnel  was 
changed  again  and  again.  The  commission  that  finally 
did  go  was  by  no  means  favourably  disposed,  but  very 
sensitive  to  missionary  interests.  The  upshot  of  its 
investigations  was  a  recommendation  still  unpublished 
and  contrary  to  the  best  judgment  of  the  American 


196  ZIONISM  AND  WORLD  POLITICS 


experts  on  the  subject  at  the  Peace  Conference.  This 
recommendation  was  not  in  favour  of  Jewish  Palestine. 

So  the  Peace  Conference  dragged  on.  By  the  time 
the  Treaty  of  Versailles  was  signed,  the  terms  of  a 
Jewish  Palestine  had  been  outlined  on  paper,  verbal 
pledges  had  been  given  and  taken,  but  nothing  defini¬ 
tive  had  been  accomplished.  A  Turkish  treaty  had 
been  drafted  but  its  terms  were  far  from  established, 
and  the  time  of  its  presentation  to  the  Turks  seemed 
indefinitely  remote.  The  Peace  Conference  disbanded 
with  the  bulk  of  its  work  still  to  do.  The  Zionists 
returned  to  their  respective  countries,  fed  on  air, 
promise-crammed.  The  enthusiastic  certainty  of  the 
war-time  had  been  modified  by  the  experience  of  the 
peace-making  into  anxious  and  watchful  expectancy. 
It  was  apparent  that  if  the  powers  were  going  to  throw 
overboard  any  of  the  causes  they  had  espoused  under 
the  lash  of  war  needs  the  cause  of  the  Jews  would  be 
the  first  to  go.  Nevertheless,  the  Zionists,  particularly 
the  American  Zionists,  proceeded  with  their  work 
and  plans  as  if  the  Jewish  Homeland  in  Palestine  were 
a  foregone  conclusion.  They  proceeded  on  the  assump¬ 
tion  that  the  war  had  vindicated  for  all  times  the  rights 
of  small  nationalities  and  that  covenants,  particularly 
the  open  covenants  openly  arrived  at,  between  great 
powers  and  such  nationalities  never  again  would, 
nor  could,  be  scraps  of  paper.  It  was  an  imaginative 
and  courageous  assumption,  a  fine  and  bold  act  of 
faith.  There  was  perhaps  also  an  element  of  despair 
in  it.  And  it  is  difficult  to  say  whether,  in  this  instance 
of  the  process  of  group  contacts  and  interaction,  the 
faith,  as  is  so  often  the  case  in  matters  social  and  psy¬ 
chological,  did  not  create  its  own  verification. 


CHAPTER  XIV 


FROM  VERSAILLES  TO  SAN  REMO — THE  BASIC  CONFLICT 

THAT  the  treaties  signed  at  Versailles  brought  not 
peace,  but  more  war;  that  they  intensified  the  unrest, 
misery,  and  disintegration  of  all  the  countries  of  Europe 
which  were  affected  by  them;  that  they  were  in  essence 
an  act  of  dishonesty,  a  jockeying  of  solemn  pledges 
to  a  beaten  enemy — these  have  become  commonplaces 
of  liberal  and  humanist  discussion  of  the  terms  of 
peace.  The  stupidity  of  these  terms  was,  in  liberal 
opinion,  profounder  than  even  their  malevolence. 
By  means  of  them,  as  Mr.  Maynard  Keynes  has  un¬ 
answerably  shown  and  events  have  sufficiently  proved, 
the  governments  of  the  allied  and  associated  powers 
cut  off  their  noses  to  spite  their  faces.  It  would 
be  as  easy  as  it  is  thankless  to  analyze  the  behaviour 
and  to  apportion  the  guilt  of  the  statesmen  responsible. 
No  doubt  the  guilt  is  sure  and  the  responsibility  in¬ 
eluctable:  the  character,  temperament,  knowledge, 
and  wisdom  of  these  men  must  be  counted,  no  less 
than  many  other  things,  as  efficient  causes  in  the  ulti¬ 
mate  result,  and  must  bear  their  share  of  the  iniquity 
of  the  outcome. 

But  they  were  not  the  basic  causes  nor  the  import¬ 
ant  causes.  Certainly,  more  intelligence  and  less  self- 
deception  on  the  part  of  Mr.  Wilson,  more  honesty 
and  less  flexibility  on  the  part  of  Mr.  Lloyd  George, 

197 


198  ZIONISM  AND  WORLD  POLITICS 


more  knowledge  and  less  vindictiveness  on  the  part  of 
M.  Clemenceau,  would  have  given  the  outcome  a 
different  turn  and  the  consequent  trend  of  events  in 
Europe  a  more  hopeful  and  cheerier  direction.  Cer¬ 
tainly,  had  an'y  operative  factor  in  the  peace-making 
been  other  than  it  was,  the  peace  and  its  consequences 
would  have  been  other.  When  that  has  been  said, 
all  has  been  said — and  nothing.  For  the  significant 
thing  with  regard  to  any  discussion  of  the  making  of 
that  peace  is  not  the  speculation  of  how  it  might  have 
been  different  but  the  understanding  of  what  were  the 
forces  which  made  it  what  it  was.  Of  these  forces 
the  men  who  formulated  the  peace  were  but  the  last 
terms  and  expressions,  the  channels,  the  contact  points; 
in  themselves — like  the  straw  that  broke  the  camel’s 
back — of  no  weight  to  speak  of,  but  piled  on  top  of  all 
the  rest  cataclysmal. 

Now  the  tendency  which  is  above  designated  as  “all 
the  rest”  constituted  what  has  already  been  pointed 
to  as  a  diminishing,  not  an  expanding  phase  of  social 
change.  It  is  the  tendency  which  in  making  for  politi¬ 
cal  democracy  made  also  for  financial  imperialism. 
We  have  seen  how  the  process  of  this  democracy  began 
with  the  philosophy  of  natural  rights  as  compensation 
in  idea  for  the  inequalities  of  the  dynastic  state,  and 
how  in  the  history  of  European  politics  it  took  the  form 
of  the  degradation  of  monarchical  power  and  its  dis¬ 
placement  by  popular  power  to  be  ultimately  organized 
in  the  mode  of  parliamentarism  on  the  basis  of  manhood 
suffrage.  The  philosophy  of  natural  rights  and  its  im¬ 
plicated  political  ideals  could  hardly  have  possessed 
the  force  and  duration  which  are  their  properties  if 
they  had  not  rested  in  something  more  substantial 


THE  BASIC  CONFLICT 


199 


than  the  passion  of  resentment  and  the  mechanism 
of  emotional  compensation.  They  were,  as  a  matter  of 
fact,  expressive  as  well  as  compensatory,  and  what  they 
expressed  were  the  abilities  and  self-sufficiency  of  an 
ordinary  family  under  an  economy  prevailingly  agricul¬ 
tural.  This  is  the  central  and  coercive  fact  regarding 
the  “democracy  ”  for  which  the  Great  War  was  to  make 
the  world  safe.  Implanted  in  Europe  and  in  America 
by  the  force  of  two  revolutions — the  one  in  the  British 
colonies  of  North  America  and  the  one  in  France — it 
set  the  “sovereign  nation”  of  farmer-citizens  against 
the  “sovereign  king,”  government  by  consent  against 
government  by  authority,  representation  of  the  masses 
of  electors  against  direct  control  by  the  classes.  The 
masses  were  mostly  peasants — farmers  and  agricultural 
labourers;  the  classes  were  mostly  landlords,  and  oftener 
than  not,  of  alien  race.  What  lay  between  them 
and  kept  generating  their  conflict  and  its  cataclysms 
was  the  land.  The  vital  need  which  the  whole  natural- 
right  philosophy  with  its  nationalist-democratic  poli¬ 
tics  expressed  and  served  was  the  need  for  land.  The 
modern  “democracy”  which  integrated  and  incarnated 
them  came  into  existence  as  the  popular  political  em¬ 
bodiment  of  an  elementary  economy  of  agriculture 
wherein  the  ostensible  unit  of  political  action  was  the 
freeholding  agricultural  worker,  living  with  his  family 
off  his  land  through  toil  or  through  rent  or  both.  In 
America  there  was  any  amount  of  free  land  to  be  had 
for  the  taking;  in  France,  even  as  recently  in  Russia, 
the  revolution  became  effective  and  irrevocable,  with 
the  expropriation  of  the  feudal  landlord  and  the  re¬ 
distribution  of  the  land  to  the  peasantry.  In  England 
and  the  rest  of  Europe,  however,  the  recovery  of  the 


200  ZIONISM  AND  WORLD  POLITICS 


land  by  the  people  was  slower  and  more  doubtful. 
Its  culmination  in  the  former  country  was  interfered 
with  by  the  war,  and  the  war  seems  to  have  been  set 
going  on  the  continent,  in  order,  among  other  purposes, 
to  forestall  its  initiation  there. 

The  social  processes  called  democracy  were,  however, 
no  sooner  set  up  than  they  were  crossed  and  crowded 
by  new  ideas  and  new  processes  deriving  from  a  new 
economy.  The  new  economy  is  the  economy  of  in¬ 
dustry.  Under  it  the  farmer  or  landowner  does  not 
live  upon  the  soil  he  owns  and  draw  his  living  direct 
from  it.  The  working  of  the  soil  is  merely  subordi¬ 
nated  to  the  operations  of  the  mill  or  factory  and  may 
go  on  in  areas  very  far  removed  from  these — across 
continents,  in  foreign  lands,  in  colonies,  and  so  on.  The 
soil  produces  only  “raw  material”  which  is  trans¬ 
ferred  to  the  industrial  plant  where  the  mass  of  men 
and  women,  working  at  great  machines,  serve  together 
to  change  it  into  the  finished  product.  Mostly,  these 
men  and  women  neither  own  nor  rent  land ;  they  neither 
own  nor  otherwise  are  secure  in  their  dwelling-places; 
they  neither  own  nor  lease  the  tools  and  machinery 
which  their  skill  alone  can  keep  from  being  just  so  much 
junk.  Compared  with  the  agricultural  worker  they 
are  nomads.  Subject  to  unemployment,  they  move 
from  place  to  place  according  to  the  exigencies  of 
machine  production.  Compared  with  the  agricultural 
worker,  miserable  though  he  may  be,  they  lack  both 
stability  and  freedom.  Willy-nilly,  no  one  of  them  is 
in  himself  anything  as  an  economic  unit.  Each  shares 
with  all  his  fellows,  in  the  most  intimate  way,  the  in¬ 
terest  in  the  land  from  which  comes  the  material  he 
works  on;  the  interest  in  the  machine  he  works  it  with, 


THE  BASIC  CONFLICT 


201 


the  interest  in  the  men  and  women  who  are  his  fellow 
workers  at  the  machine.  For  a  shortage  of  raw  material, 
a  defect  in  the  machine,  a  failure  of  any  one  worker 
in  his  part  of  the  industrial  process  jeopardizes  the  live¬ 
lihood  of  all.  The  automatic  machine  forces  all  who 
are  productively  related  to  it  into  an  integral  commun¬ 
ity  wherein  collective  possession  and  free  cooperative 
collaboration  are  inevitably  indicated.  They  begin 
as  the  labour  union  and  other  modes  of  workman 
associations;  it  is  not  yet  clear  in  what  form  they  will 
culminate. 

Thus,  at  the  same  time  that  the  democracy  which  is 
the  political  aspect  of  the  older  agricultural  economy 
was  winning  its  slow  and  precarious  way  against  feudal¬ 
ism  and  monarchism,  the  economy  of  industry  was 
displacing  and  profoundly  modifying  the  agricultural 
scheme.  But  while  democracy  was  dislocating  the 
feudal  overlord  politically  through  suffrage,  it  en¬ 
trenched  him  economically  through  industry.  For 
he  alone — bar  a  small  aggregation  of  bankers  and  mer¬ 
chants,  who  used  to  be  largely  his  factors  and  agents, 
and  who  became  his  partners  during  the  industrializa¬ 
tion  of  society — was  ever  possessed  of  a  surplus  of 
capital  large  enough  to  use  for  making  the  automatic 
machine  and  putting  it  to  work.  The  central  fact 
of  the  domestic  economy  of  the  western  world  during  the 
nineteenth  century  became  thus  the  interplay  of  the 
governing  ideas  of  political  democracy  with  the  situa¬ 
tion  created  by  the  swift  and  uneven  spread  of  the 
industrial  economy.  Through  this  interplay,  popula¬ 
tion  became  urbanized;  the  serf  became  the  citizen; 
the  peasant,  the  proletarian;  the  landlord  became 
the  investor,  and  the  factor,  the  banker  and  manager; 


202  ZIONISM  AND  WORLD  POLITICS 


foreign  lands  ceased  to  be  places  to  loot,  as  in  the 
past,  and  became  sources  of  raw  material  and  markets 
for  finished  goods.  Through  this  interplay  political 
democracy  became  a  direct  and  efficient  cause  of 
financial  imperialism.  Europe  became  and  the  whole 
world  tended  to  become,  a  unified  single  economic 
mechanism,  dominated  by  a  separatist  political  ide¬ 
ology.  Soon  it  grew  apparent  that  the  victories  of 
democracy  in  politics  brought  with  them  no  modi¬ 
fication  in  the  economic  supremacy  of  privilege. 
Capitalism  developed  into  merely  the  feudalism  of 
industry:  it  replaced  the  overlord’s  direct  control 
of  politics  by  an  indirect  or  invisible  control.  Re¬ 
action  against  it  took  form  as  the  new  system  of  ideas 
embodying  the  programme  of  life  which  is  generally 
called  socialism.  This  spread  as  a  gospel  while  de¬ 
mocracy  was  taking  root  as  an  institution. 

The  scope  and  extent  of  these  curiously  interlacing 
processes,  usually  called  capitalism,  was  contingent 
on  a  variety  of  factors  that  kept  coming  together  in 
ironic  and  often  in  grotesque  combinations.  Among 
these  factors  alone  the  inertia  of  habit  and  tradition 
stands  out.  Highly  industrialized  countries  like  Eng¬ 
land,  where  the  use  of  machinery  had  overtaken  and 
outdistanced  democracy,  seemed,  prior  to  the  war,  in 
all  basic  essentials  untouched  by  the  doctrine;  yet 
what  happened  during  the  war  and  since  shows  how 
deeply  and  imperceptibly  the  automatic  machine  had 
altered  the  habits  and  outlook  of  Englishmen,  and 
with  it  their  attitude  toward  their  country’s  political 
organization.  Almost  exclusively  agricultural  states 
like  Russia,  whose  political  pattern  was  very  nearly 
mediaeval,  underwent  revolution  predominantly  under 


THE  BASIC  CONFLICT 


203 


the  impulsion  of  a  communistic  socialism,  to  emerge, 
if  reports  of  observers  may  be  trusted,  as  France 
emerged  from  her  revolution,  secure  in  the  change 
only  through  a  redistribution  of  land  such  as  would 
make  inexorably  for  a  political  rather  than  a  social 
democracy,  and  undergoing  socialization,  therefore, 
by  means  of  autocratic  force.  Germany,  next  to 
England  the  most  industrialized  country  in  the  world, 
and  without  exception  the  most  purposively  organized, 
develops  a  socialist  party  which  functions  politically 
as  a  democratic  opposition  to  a  powerful  monarchy 
with  feudal  traditions,  and  which  becomes,  in  the 
light  of  socialist  ideology,  reactionary  once  it  gets 
established  in  power  by  a  revolution  brought  on  through 
external,  not  internal,  causes.  In  the  United  States,  a 
country  half  industrial,  half  agricultural,  whose  sur¬ 
pluses  are  still  very  considerable.  Socialism  as  an 
ideology  is  irrelevant  and  tangential,  even  trade-union 
organization  is  elementary,  the  Socialist  Party  is  the 
merest  party  of  protest;  yet  revolutionary  modifications 
of  the  political  structure  of  the  country  take  place 
(such  as  the  growth  of  executive  power,  or  the  creation 
of  commissions  like  the  Interstate  Commerce  Com¬ 
mission),  compelled  by  the  reshaping  pressure  of  the 
automatic  machine  on  the  habits  of  men’s  lives  and  the 
organization  of  their  society. 

And  so  on.  Not  a  country  in  the  world  wherein  dwell 
considerable  numbers  of  men  but  its  economy  has 
undergone  alteration  in  noticeable  ways  by  the  existence 
and  increase  of  machinery.  Nevertheless,  such  altera¬ 
tions  have  for  the  most  part  been  unconscious,  reflexive, 
forced,  rather  than  conscious  and  voluntary,  matters 
of  automatic  response  rather  than  of  planned  control, 


204  ZIONISM  AND  WORLD  POLITICS 


and  the  theory  of  life  envisaging  their  purport  and 
direction  has  functioned  as  protest  rather  than  pro¬ 
gramme.  It  has  not  yet  attained  that  successful  in¬ 
carnation  without  which  nothing  gets  recognized 
as  respectable.  Its  protagonists  still  lack  the  prestige 
of  an  “integral  victory,”  just  as  the  protagonists  of 
political  democracy  lacked  it  at  the  beginning  of  the 
nineteenth  century.  At  the  beginning  of  the  twentieth 
the  latter  have  it,  and  their  minds,  therefore,  appre¬ 
hend  righteousness  as  nothing  else  than  the  ideology 
of  this  democracy. 

With  such  variations  as  differences  of  inheritance, 
setting,  and  experience  of  necessity  impose,  the  men  who 
possessed  the  supreme  power  in  the  making  of  the 
peace  were  subjected  to  the  domination  of  the  demo¬ 
cratic  ideology  and  to  the  conditions  whereby  it  is 
respectable.  When  the  Treaty  of  Vienna  was  signed 
and  the  Holy  Alliance  established  as  a  union  of  “the 
ruling  princes  of  Europe  into  a  religious  brotherhood 
pledged  to  guide  themselves  wholly  by  Christian 
principles,”  a  similar  situation  obtained  with  respect 
to  a  less  secular  body  of  maxims  which  had  also  be¬ 
come  respectable.  Circumstances,  particularly  the 
swelling  tide  of  political  democracy,  compelled  the 
coupling  of  Christian  principles  with  Machiavellian 
practices,  just  as  after  the  treaties  of  Versailles  and 
St.  Germain  democratic  principles  got  coupled  with 
star-chamber  practices.  The  statesmen  who  pro¬ 
moted  the  practices  declared  them  necessary  to  pre¬ 
serve  the  principles.  Even  when  they  knew  better, 
they  could  not  help  themselves.  They  were  frightened 
— frightened  of  Bolshevism.  Old  men  all  of  them,  past 
the  prime  of  life,  their  minds  had  grown  up  and  the  pat- 


THE  BASIC  CONFLICT 


£05 


tern  of  their  political  thinking  had  got  fixed  in  the  days 
“when  the  political  democracy  which  was  establishing 
itself  still  stood  sufficiently  firm  upon  the  agricultural 
economy  which  is  its  foundation.  Their  lives  had 
been  spent  in  the  contemplation  and  manipulation 
of  the  ideology  and  institutions  of  this  democracy. 
To  the  new  conditions  created  by  the  growth  of  in¬ 
dustry  under  machine  operation  they  deferred  only 
as  they  were  compelled  to.  The  labour  movement 
as  distinguished  from  the  political  movement  was  to 
them  an  obstruction,  not  the  basis  of  an  ideal.  They 
crushed  it  when  they  could  and  compromised  with  it 
when  they  had  to.  They  did  everything  to  it  except 
understand  it.  For  understanding  it  they  had  become 
too  old.  Their  habits  of  attention  and  action — like 
those  of  their  generation  who  made  and  ruled  the  war — 
had  become  fixed,  and  what  they  performed  habitually 
and  spontaneously  was  irrelevant  to  the  new  conditions 
which  were  displacing  and  rendering  obsolescent  the 
political  forms  wherewith  they  were  preoccupied.  So 
far  as  their  relations  to  the  real  conditions  of  social 
growth  were  concerned,  they  were  functioning  in  a 
vacuum.  Prevailingly,  it  is  this  organization  of  mind 
that  these  old  men  carried  over  to  the  peace  table: 
this  that  has  governed  their  framing  of  the  covenant 
of  international  polity  and  their  ordination  of  a  new 
international  system.  They  framed  the  most  that 
they  were  able  to  frame.  They  framed  a  mere  re¬ 
production  of  the  pattern  of  the  national  polity  of 
industrial  states.”1  That  they  did  this  under  the  im¬ 
pulsion  of  many  other  motives  as  well — Wilson’s  fear  of 
Bolshevism  and  blinding  obsession  with  the  League, 


1Cf.  Elisha  Friedman:  “America  and  the  New  Era,”  pp.  73-74. 


206  ZIONISM  AND  WORLD  POLITICS 


Clemenceau’s  militarist  imperialism,1  Lloyd  George’s 
wish  to  seem  to  try  to  keep  his  election  pledges,  Or¬ 
lando’s  to  mitigate  the  opposition  at  home,  the  wish 
of  the  three  Europeans  to  transfer  to  the  erstwhile 
enemy  the  burden  of  meeting  the  costs  of  the  war  and 
the  indebtedness  of  the  peace — is  incidental.  The 
treaties  imposed  upon  the  Germans  and  the  Austrians, 
the  treaties  delivered  to  the  lesser  and  the  newer 
states — such  as  Poland,  Czecho-Slovakia,  Finland, 
Rumania,  Bulgaria,  Serbia — all  speak  the  language 
of  democracy  and  impose  the  regulations  of  imperialism. 
They  seek  to  ordain,  in  terms  of  exclusive  national 
sovereignties,  reciprocal,  non-national,  economic  re¬ 
lationships.  They  are  consequently  implicated  in  an 
inevitable  self-defeating  duplexity  which  may  in¬ 
differently  be  interpreted  as  the  hypocrisy  and  insin¬ 
cerity  of  the  members  of  the  Council  of  Four,  as  Mr. 
Maynard  Keynes  thinks,  or  as  the  dilemma  inherent 
in  the  conflict  between  the  ideology  of  the  peace  and 
its  effective  conditions.  One  of  two  things  must,  in 
the  course  of  the  next  few  years,  inevitably  happen: 
Either  Europe  will  revert  to  the  agricultural  economy 
consistent  with  the  ideology  of  its  dominating  cove¬ 
nant,  in  the  process  of  the  reversion  undergoing 
decimation  and  moral  and  intellectual  retrogression 
through  the  horrors  of  starvation  and  the  terrors  of 
revolution,  or  the  process  of  conscious  economic 
integration  which  the  war  compelled2  will  be  under- 


1Even  Mr.  Wilson  recognized  this.  “Through  the  sessions  of  the  Con¬ 
ference  in  Paris,”  he  wrote  to  Senator  Hitchcock,  March  8,  1920,  “it  was 
evident  that  a  militaristic  party,  under  the  most  influential  leadership,  was 
seeking  to  gain  ascendency  in  the  councils  of  France.  They  were  defeated 
there  but  are  in  control  now.” 

2 Cf.  H.  M.  Kallen,  “The  League  of  Nations  Today  and  Tomorrow.” 


THE  BASIC  CONFLICT 


207 


taken  again,  on  an  all-inclusive  European,  ultimately 
a  world-wide,  scale.  From  the  conference  at  Versailles 
to  the  conference  at  San  Remo  the  former  alternative 
dominated.  Since  San  Remo  there  have  been  indica¬ 
tions,  in  the  altered  attitude  toward  Germany  and  in  the 
activities  of  the  League  of  Nations  looking  toward  an 
international  economic  conference,  of  a  movement  in 
the  direction  of  the  latter  alternative. 


CHAPTER  XV 


FROM  VERSAILLES  TO  SAN  REMO — THE  CONFLICT  IN 

RUSSIA  AND  AMERICA 

THE  outstanding  index  of  the  compulsion  of  events 
toward  sanity  has  been  the  changing  attitude  toward 
Russia.  Such  industrialization  as  had  been  effected 
in  Russia  prior  to  the  revolution  had  been  effected 
sporadically,  in  isolated  spots,  and  mostly  through 
foreign  capital  and  management.  The  bulk  of  it 
was  concentrated  on  her  western  frontier,  in  those  areas 
which  have  since  become  parts  of  Poland  and  the  other 
new  states.  The  economy  of  Russia  is  still  prevailingly 
agricultural.  Prior  to  the  war  she  was  the  source  of 
food  and  raw  materials  to  her  industrialized  neigh¬ 
bours.  Industry  modified  her  economy  mostly  in 
terms  of  transport;  not  only  her  traffic  with  other  com¬ 
munities,  but  the  development  and  exploitation  of 
her  extraordinarily  rich  and  varied  natural  resources 
depended  on  that.  Transport  was  an  outstanding 
concern  of  the  Tsarist  government;  it  remains  the 
outstanding  concern  of  the  Soviet  Republic.  Even 
without  adequate  transport  an  isolated  Russia  could,  for 
many  years,  be  economically  self-sufficient:  her  level  of 
organization  would  be  comparatively  low  and  simple  and 
under  the  stress  of  the  revolutionary  ideology,  would 
tend  to  realize  the  ideals  of  democracy  of  the  eighteenth 
century.  The  Allied  blockade  against  her  hence 

208 


RUSSIA  AND  AMERICA 


209 


succeeded  only  in  killing  hundreds  of  thousands  of 
innocent  non-combatants  in  cities  by  keeping  from 
them  the  tools  and  materials  with  which  they  were 
used  to  make  articles  of  exchange  with  the  country 
and  by  withholding  necessary  medicines;  otherwise  it 
served  simply  as  a  tonic  to  Soviet  morale.  The  Soviet 
government  could  have  survived  under  it  longer  than 
those  of  the  other  European  countries;  as  Signor 
Nitti  admitted,  they  needed  foodstuffs  and  raw  ma¬ 
terials  far  more  than  Russia  needed  locomotives. 
But  their  policy  was  based  on  considerations  very 
different  from  the  economic.  It  was  based  first  of 
all  on  the  hope  and  wish  to  recover  for  the  financial 
imperialists  the  pre-revolutionary  investments  and 
concessions  and  their  rich  profits;  and,  secondly,  on 
a  moral  panic  manifested  in  symbols  of  the  democratic 
ideology.  This  panic  was  in  Europe  the  panic  of  the 
investing  and  privileged  classes;  only  in  America  did  it 
infect — under  the  influence  of  malefic  propaganda,  it 
is  true — the  majority  of  the  people.  In  Europe,  the 
sentiment  of  the  majority  of  the  people  opposed  it — 
particularly  the  sentiment  of  organized  labour — and 
finally  took  practical  expression  in  the  refusal  to  trans¬ 
port  ammunitions  for  use  against  the  Soviet  armies. 
The  excess  of  this  ammunition  over  the  needs  of  the 
Great  War  was  itself  a  controlling  factor  in  the  prolonga¬ 
tion  of  the  war  of  the  Allied  governments  upon  Russia. 
The  adventures  of  Kolchak,  Denikine,  Judenitch, 
Wrangel,  and  Pilsudki  would  not  have  been  so  lightly 
undertaken  without  it. 

That  they  were  undertaken  at  all,  moreover,  was  a 
symptom  of  confusion  and  uncertainty,  rather  than 
of  well-planned  and  executed  policy  on  the  part  of  the 


210  ZIONISM  AND  WORLD  POLITICS 


Entente.  The  social  personality  known  as  the  Russian 
Soviet  Republic  had  become  a  baffling,  obscure,  and 
impudent  thing,  a  very  enfant  terrible  of  politics.  In 
its  foreign  relations  its  government  exhibited  a  candour 
and  realism,  a  shameless  frankness  of  statement  very 
embarrassing  to  the  tradition  and  practice  of  unflinch¬ 
ing  mendacity  normal  to  Allied  diplomacy.  It  had 
assumed  the  championship  of  the  rights  of  man;  it 
repudiated  annexations  and  indemnities;  it  practised 
open  diplomacy,  it  preached  and  sought  peace;  it  pro¬ 
fessed  and  practised  the  doctrine  of  self-determination. 
It  warred  by  propaganda  even  more  than  by  arms; 
seeking  alliance  with  subject  peoples  in  the  east, 
appealing  to  peoples  against  governments  in  the  west. 
And  its  practices  squared  with  its  professions,  as  an 
examination  of  its  treaties  with  the  Baltic  States  will 
show. 

How  much  of  the  war  propaganda  was  due  to  doc¬ 
trinal  fanaticism  and  how  much  to  the  exigencies 
of  its  position  cannot  be  seriously  estimated.  Its 
position  held  and  holds  inherent  contradictions  which 
must  be  resolved  if  Russia  is  to  survive  as  a  communist 
republic.  These  contradictions  were  implicated  in 
the  irrelevance  of  the  Socialist  ideology  to  the  prevailing 
agricultural  economy.  The  practical  necessities  of  ad¬ 
ministration  had  compelled  very  extensive  accommoda¬ 
tions  of  doctrine  to  the  circumstances,  habits,  social 
traditions,  and  personal  trends  of  the  peasant  masses. 
The  security  of  the  government  rested  primarily 
upon  the  fact  that  it  was  the  guarantee  that  the  redis¬ 
tribution  of  the  land  was  final;  secondarily  upon  the 
pressure  from  external  enemies.  Domestic  policy, 
directed  by  these  two  facts,  developed  as  the  auto- 


RUSSIA  AND  AMERICA 


211 


cratic  regime  of  a  party.  Liberty  was  the  least  of  its 
concerns,  equality  the  greatest;  effort  was  applied 
to  reducing  to  a  minimum  the  economic  differences 
between  the  citizens  of  the  Soviet  Republic;  all  other 
differences  were  ignored,  and  those  in  conflict  ^yith 
the  equalitarian  programme  were  repressed.  Thus 
anti-Semitism  has  been  practically  rooted  out  in 
Soviet  Russia,  and  barring  the  provocative  action  of 
fanatical  Jewish  “internationalists,”  Jews  have  been 
able  to  go  their  own  way  as  Jews  in  no  less  peace  and 
security  than  other  Russians  of  the  non-proletarian 
classes. 

At  the  same  time  education  was  organized  to  estab¬ 
lish  both  in  adults  and  in  children — in  children  particu¬ 
larly — as  firm  a  faith  in  the  Socialist  ideology  as  had 
ever  obtained  in  the  Christian.  The  new  generation 
has  been  the  overruling  object  of  constructive  regard 
in  Soviet  domestic  policy. 

But  faith  without  works  is  a  danger  and  a  dream. 
The  hope  for  a  genuine  communism  for  the  generation 
to  come,  Lenine  recognized,  lies  not  in  the  mere  altera¬ 
tion  of  the  ideas  of  the  Russian  people;  it  lies  far  more 
fundamentally  in  the  establishment  of  the  institutional 
conditions  which  control  and  direct  ideas  and  generate 
and  confirm  the  habits  whereby  institutions  keep  going. 
The  industrialization  of  Russia  is  essential  to  the  success 
of  communism  in  Russia;  it  must  be  ready  for  the  new 
generation  which  grows  up.  This,  accordingly,  had  to 
become  the  constructive  aim  of  Russian  foreign  policy. 
To  accomplish  this  aim  it  is  indispensable  that  the 
economic  relations  between  Russia  and  the  industrial 
states  shall  be  restored  as  soon  as  possible.  Lenine, 
perhaps  more  than  any  other  statesman  in  Europe, 


212  ZIONISM  AND  WORLD  POLITICS 


realizes  the  organic  character  of  modern  industrial 
civilization:  he  accepts  boldly  and  frankly  the  inevita¬ 
bility  of  industrialization  and  he  is  eager,  as  his  sardonic 
statements  show,  to  initiate  as  swiftly  as  possible  the 
exchange  of  “socialistic  wheat  for  capitalistic  locomo¬ 
tives,”  which  is  the  first  step.  He  is  ready  to  make 
extensive  concessions  for  the  sake  of  the  swift  expansion 
of  machine  industry  in  Russia.  Hence  military  op¬ 
pression  and  militant  propaganda  in  the  east  are 
accompanied  with  offers  of  all  sorts  of  concessions 
and  agreements  in  the  west.  There  is  every  indication 
that  the  former  are  carried  on  to  enable  the  Soviet 
Republic  to  add  to  the  weight  of  the  latter  as  items 
of  exchange  in  return  for  recognition  and  trade. 

Now  the  commerce  which  would  come  to  Russia  as  a 
result  of  an  adjustment  with  the  Allies  would  mitigate 
in  a  considerable  degree  a  certain  monopoly  of  the 
same  now  enjoyed  in  Europe  by  the  United  States. 
Whether  the  attitude  of  the  American  Government 
toward  Soviet  Russia  has  not  largely  been  influenced 
by  this  fact  would  be  a  matter  of  curious  speculation. 
The  irony  of  the  whole  international  situation  lies  in 
the  major  role  which  perhaps  the  most  disinterested 
and  powerful,  the  most  naive  and  idealistic  as  well 
as  the  wealthiest  state  in  the  world  has  played  in  the 
making  of  it.  Such  democratic  and  abstractly  philan¬ 
thropic  trends  as  were  apparent  in  the  negotiations 
beginning  with  the  armistice  were  more  immediately  the 
outcome  of  the  attitude  of  the  government  of  the 
United  States.  The  eighteenth-century  humanitarian- 
ism,  the  anti-monarchism,  the  republicanism,  the 
deference  to  majorities,  and  the  pacifism  which  are 
characteristic  of  the  democratic  ideology  were,  in 


RUSSIA  AND  AMERICA 


213 


fact,  the  operative  sentiment  of  American  public 
opinion  with  regard  to  the  peace.  The  cordial  attitude 
toward  the  first  phases  of  the  revolution  in  Russia,  the 
dissolution  of  the  central  empires  and  the  establish¬ 
ment  of  the  aggregation  of  more  or  less  democratic 
republics  in  their  stead,  the  guarantees  of  the  rights 
of  national  minorities,  the  pacific  and  philanthropic 
items  of  the  covenant  of  the  League  of  Nations,  all 
expressed  the  positive  traditional  sentiment  of  the 
American  people.  But  they  looked  backward  rather 
than  forward,  and  because  they  looked  backward  they 
enabled  the  American  senate  to  play  politics  with  the 
treaty  without  fear  of  public  opinion,  and  they  worked 
as  disintegrating  and  anarchic  rather  than  saving  in¬ 
fluences  upon  the  organization  of  Europe. 

The  American  retrospection  was  inherent  and 
inevitable.  It  was  a  symptom  of  the  strain  created 
by  the  existence  of  a  growing  industrial  economy 
under  a  fundamental  law  resting  on  agricultural 
foundations.  The  community  had,  since  1900,  been 
drifting,  without  any  definite  conscious  direction,  a 
confusion  and  a  tumult.  No  real  political  issues 
divided  it  into  real  parties,  no  economic  classes  had 
gained  stability  and  tradition  enough  to  give  body  to  a 
class  alignment.  The  only  unfailing  force  in  the  re¬ 
molding  of  the  national  life  was  the  much-used,  but 
in  its  social  effects  altogether  unstudied,  automatic 
machine.  National  political  thought  looked,  as  a 
result,  backward,  to  the  lucid  and  articulate  past,  to 
the  Constitution  and  the  Fathers.  It  was  motivated 
by  memory  rather  than  the  present  urgencies  to  which 
memory  had  become  irrelevant.  Unrest  grew,  in 
spite  of  prosperity,  often  because  of  it — and  the  end  is 


214  ZIONISM  AND  WORLD  POLITICS 


not  yet.  The  country  grew  sick  of  a  neurasthenia 
from  which  the  various  44 progressive”  movements 
were  interesting  and  inefficacious  efforts  at  relief. 
The  war  did  bring  a  degree  of  relief — unhappily  tempo¬ 
rary.  It  could  do  so  not  because  it  required  meeting  a 
common  enemy,  but  because  it  compelled  political 
thought  and  administrative  organization  to  pay  con¬ 
scious  attention  to  new  and  constant  factors  in  the 
national  life  which  had  caused  the  conflicts  of  habit 
and  feeling  wherein  consisted  the  national  nervousness. 
From  the  time  these  factors  came  out  into  the  open 
a  tendency  toward  a  rearrangement  of  the  lines  of 
force  of  the  national  life  has  been  manifest.  War  pro¬ 
duction  with  its  accompanying  financial  inflation  has 
strengthened  this  tendency.  The  artificially  created 
war  psychology  has  strengthened  it.  The  transference 
since  the  armistice  of  the  war  animus  from  the  Ger¬ 
mans  to  the  Russians,  and  the  manifestations  of  Mr. 
Palmer’s  Okhrana  and  the  4  4  red  hysteria”  were  symp¬ 
toms  of  it.  For  the  rest,  the  public  mind  lost  sight 
of  Europe  altogether.  League  of  Nations  or  no  League 
of  Nations,  the  habitual  American  ideology  had  been 
realized  through  the  war:  America  had  grown  tired 
of  foreign  entanglements;  public  attention  turned  in¬ 
ward  to  the  issues  of  industrial  conflict,  high  prices, 
and  such,  consideration  of  which,  as  a  matter  of  fact, 
the  war  had  interrupted.  The  only  regard  for  matters 
alien  which  did  survive  survived  in  the  form  of  per¬ 
secuting  animosity  toward  anybody  or  anything  strange 
and  different,  usually  called  at  the  time  44  Bolshevik.” 
An  Americanization  craze,  whose  typical  symptom 
is  the  concept  44  100%  American,”  exfoliated  out  of  the 
red  hysteria  and  Palmerism.  The  Constitution  was 


RUSSIA  AND  AMERICA 


215 


treated  as  a  fetish  and  Socialism  as  a  devil.  And  the 
while  the  President  was  lying  helpless  on  his  bed 
with  a  clot  on  his  brain,  and  the  members  of  his 
bureaucracy  either  marked  time,  like  the  Department 
of  the  Interior  or  held  high  jinks,  like  the  Department 
of  Justice. 

Oblivious  of  Europe  though  America  was,  so  far  as 
the  country’s  pertinent  feeling  and  efficacious  attention 
were  concerned,  Europe  was  kept  present  to  the  Ameri¬ 
can  mind  in  two  ways.  First  (and  most  significantly 
because  of  the  political  importance  of  their  votes)  by 
the  poignant  personal  interest  of  great  groups  of  Ameri¬ 
can  citizens  of  central  and  east  European  extraction 
in  the  fate  of  their  friends  and  relatives  on  that  un¬ 
happy  continent.  This  interest  coalesced  with  the 
traditional  humanitarianism  of  the  American  mind 
and  imparted  to  the  philanthropy  of  various  American 
private  relief  organizations  a  certain  political  import. 
This  import  was,  however,  more  sentimental  than 
practical.  It  bore  directly  upon  the  second  way  in 
which  Europe  was  kept  before  the  American  public — 
namely,  upon  the  romantic  interest  of  the  ethnic  groups 
in  the  political  forms  of  the  new  sovereign  states  and 
enfranchised  nationalities  of  central  Europe.  This 
interest  was  reenforced  by  diplomatic  emissaries, 
propagandists,  emigres,  and  agents  and  military  heroes 
of  Allied  governments,  particularly  of  France.  They 
constructed  for  the  admiration  of  the  American  public 
a  pure  image  of  the  new  democracies,  their  political 
forms  somehow  flattering  imitations  of  the  American, 
bravely  struggling  to  hold  their  own  and  to  “  protect 
civilization  from  the  menace  of  Bolshevism”;  im¬ 
poverished,  starved,  of  course,  and  in  dire  need  of 


216  ZIONISM  AND  WORLD  POLITICS 


generous  assistance,  but  assistance  to  be  given  as 
money  loans  to  governments,  not  as  the  economic 
rehabilitation  of  peoples.  The  realities  of  the  con¬ 
trolling  economic  correlations  were  nowhere  and  at 
no  time  in  the  picture.  The  starvation  and  misery 
of  the  populations  were  in  no  way  connected  with  them, 
nor  was  there  any  realization  of  the  mutual  implications 
of  political  reconciliation  and  generosity  with  economic 
rehabilitation.  Mr.  Hoover,  on  the  record,  might 
have  brought  these  realities  into  the  picture,  but  got 
befooled  and  diverted  by  the  politics  of  the  coming 
presidential  campaign. 


CHAPTER  XVI 


FROM  VERSAILLES  TO  SAN  REMO — THE  CONFLICT  IN 
POLAND,  THE  UKRAINE,  HUNGARY,  AND  RUMANIA 

MISLEADING  as  were  the  pictures  offered  to  Amer¬ 
ica  of  all  the  new  states,  the  picture  of  Poland  was  most 
particularly  so.  The  reason  is  not  far  to  seek.  Poland 
had  been  designed  to  become  the  fulcrum  of  the  new 
hegemony  of  the  continent  by  which  harassed  and 
almost  bankrupt  French  imperialism  hoped  to  evade 
taxation  at  home,  to  collect  its  debts  abroad,  and  at  the 
same  time  to  insure  itself  against  possible  German 
rivalry  and  actual  and  well-deserved  Russian  animosity. 
That  Poland  was  chosen  and  not  the  much  more  com¬ 
petent  Czecho-Slovakia  is  due  to  precisely  the  reasons 
which  render  Poland  an  ineffectual  means  to  such  an 
end.  It  is  due  to  the  difference  in  the  intelligence  of 
the  leadership,  the  difference  between  Masaryk  and 
Dmowski  or  Pilsudski.  Poland,  like  Russia,  had  been 
until  late  in  the  nineteenth  century  without  a  middle 
class  of  its  own  ethnic  stock.  From  the  beginning 
until  practically  the  1890’s  Poland  was  a  state  composed 
of  feudal  landlords,  Catholic  clergy,  and  peasant  villeins. 
The  landlords  constituted  an  upper  class  of  petty 
autocrats  who  lived  mostly  on  their  estates  and  devoted 
their  days  to  hunting,  fighting,  intrigue,  debauchery, 
and  Jew-baiting.  The  economic  work  of  the  state 
was  performed  by  the  peasants.  Its  administration, 

217 


218  ZIONISM  AND  WORLD  POLITICS 

manufactures,  and  commerce  were  delegated  to  these 
same  baited  Jews  and  to  German  immigrant  bourgeois. 
These  constituted  what  it  needed  of  a  middle  class. 
They  were,  for  obvious  reasons,  a  middle  class  without 
the  rights  and  powers  of  the  middle  class  of  other 
European  states.  They  were  able  to  offer  no  effective 
restriction  or  opposition  to  the  profligate  perversities 
of  the  Shlakhta  and  the  government  which  it  consti¬ 
tuted.  Powers1  says: 

Historic  Poland  was  a  signal  failure.  No  government  in 
Europe  during  the  last  thousand  years  has  a  record  for  more 
marked  incompetency.  Under  the  leadership  of  truly 
great  sovereigns,  the  provincialism  and  local  selfishness  of 
the  people  proved  obdurate  to  every  appeal,  even  in  the 
face  of  the  most  unmistakable  national  dangers.  If  ever  a 
nation  perished  because  it  was  unfit  to  live,  that  nation  was 
Poland. 

The  partition  which,  on  the  whole,  brought  a  measure 
of  relief  to  the  Polish  masses  created  a  grievance  for 
the  classes,  and  outside  of  Galicia,  which  had  gone  to 
Catholic  Austria,  for  the  clergy.  On  the  grievances 
of  these  two  estates  Polish  nationalism  was  built. 
It  would  have  been  impotent  but  for  the  oppressive 
measures  of  Prussification  and  Russification  of  the 
other  two  participants  in  the  partition.  Because  of 
those,  the  religious  loyalties  and  the  rudimentary 
cultural  development  of  the  Polish  people  received 
acceleration  and  intensification;  the  upper  class,  living 
either  on  its  estates  or  in  exile,  but  living  always  in 
idleness  or  adventure,  became  the  protagonists  of  an 
idealized  nationalist  fantasy  and  the  teachers  and 
leaders  of  rebellion. 


1  “The  Great  Peace,”  p.  290. 


POLAND,  UKRAINIA,  HUNGARY,  ETC.  219 

Meanwhile,  the  Jews  continued  to  function  as  the 
Polish  middle  class.  When  the  edge  of  the  wave  of 
industrialization  reached  as  far  as  eastern  Europe 
they  were  conspicuously  the  first  to  succumb  to  it. 
Together  with  Germans  and  Russians  from  the  trading 
centres  of  Russia  they  created  in  Poland  what  was  a 
great  part  of  the  industrial  development  of  the  Russian 
Empire.  A  town-dwelling  people  from  the  outset, 
they  became  the  foundation  of  the  proletarian  industrial 
population  of  Poland,  and  constitute  a  very  large  part 
of  it.  The  things  they  produced  were  sold  in  Russia, 
and  the  outstanding  fact  about  industrial  Poland  has 
been  its  economic  interdependence  with  Russia.  The 
influences  which  generated  a  socialist  attitude  toward 
life  in  intellectual  Russia  generated  the  same  at¬ 
titude  among  the  Poles,  with  this  difference — that  in 
Russia  it  was  atheistic,  universalist,  and  revolutionary, 
in  Poland  it  was  Catholic,  nationalist,  and  rebellious. 
It  took  form  among  the  proletarianized  Poles  as  the 
Polish  Socialist  Party,  among  the  Jews  as  the  General 
Association  (Bund)  of  Jewish  Workingmen.  The 
Romanist-nationalist  character  of  the  former  was  re¬ 
flected  in  the  somewhat  milder  nationalistic  outlook 
of  the  latter.  Both  were  opposed  by  the  National 
Democratic  Party,  whose  interests  and  leadership 
were  entirely  those  of  the  baronial  Shlakhta  and  the 
land-owning  peasantry.  The  differences  between  the 
two  Polish  parties  separated  them  less  than  their 
common  anti-Semitism  united  them.  The  more  in¬ 
tellectual  among  them  demanded  of  the  Jews  complete 
Polonization  while,  at  the  same  time,  they  denounced 
the  Russians  for  a  similar  demand  for  the  Russification 
of  the  Poles.  For  the  quarter  of  a  century  preceding 


220  ZIONISM  AND  WORLD  POLITICS 


the  war  the  Jews  were  used  politically  as  pawns  and 
stalking-horses  of  the  religious  nationalism  of  the 
Poles  and  the  cultural  imperialism  of  the  Russians. 
When,  under  the  influence  of  industrialization,  the 
landed  aristocracy  began  to  become  an  investing  class 
and  traces  of  a  Polish  middle  class  became  apparent, 
the  Polonizing  movement  took  the  form  of  an  eco¬ 
nomic  boycott,  which  aiming  at  the  “  polonization  of 
commerce”  drove  the  Jews  still  more  definitely  into 
industry.  The  initiator  of  the  policy  was  an  anti- 
Semitic  candidate  for  the  Duma  who  had  been  defeated 
by  the  Jewish  vote — Roman  Dmowski,  the  head  of 
the  National  Democratic  Party,  and  later  head  of 
the  Polish  National  Committee  in  Paris. 

When  the  war  came  this  party  adopted  a  philo- 
Russian  and  pro-Ally  policy;  under  this  policy  its  anti- 
Semitism  took  the  form  of  pro-German  accusations 
against  the  Jews.  The  Polish  Party,  headed  by  Pil- 
sudski,  adopted  an  attitude  of  militant  pro-Germanism, 
with  the  view  of  using  opportunity  as  it  might  arise 
for  the  advantage  of  Polish  independence.  The 
German  occupation  of  Poland  soon  provided  such 
an  opportunity.  The  government  that  was  then 
established,  the  constitution  that  was  adopted,  and 
such  protection  that  the  Germans  gave  was  a  protection 
to  the  powers  of  that  party.  Anti-Semitism  during 
the  period  took  the  form  of  pro-Russian  accusations 
against  the  Jews.  When,  finally,  the  Germans  were 
turned  out,  and  it  became  apparent  that  the  Dmowski- 
Paderewski-Grabski  combination  had  outguessed  the 
Pilsudski-Kuchzarewski  crowd,  there  was  some  un¬ 
certainty  as  to  whether  any  sort  of  peace  could  be 
patched  up  between  the  parties.  The  baronial- 


POLAND,  UKRAINIA,  HUNGARY,  ETC.  221 

clericalist  National  Democratic  Committee  had  the 
ear  and  the  good-will  of  the  Allies,  particularly  of 
France;  the  Polish  Socialist  Party  and  Pilsudski  had  the 
sympathy  of  the  Polish  townsmen  and  tenant  peas¬ 
antry.  The  government  which  was  finally  created  was  a 
compromise :  Pilsudski  received  the  presidency  and 
Dmowski,  Paderewski,  and  company  received  the 
power.  The  new  rulers  of  Poland  thus  are  all  men 
of  the  ancient  regime,  whose  habits  of  mind  are  im¬ 
perialistic  and  codes  of  behaviour  feudal.  Among 
them  was  an  individual  who  as  an  official  of  the  Aus¬ 
trian  Empire  had  as  much  to  do  as  any  one  with  pre¬ 
cipitating  the  Great  War. 

Poland,  independent  once  more,  was  restored  into 
the  hands  of  the  class  which  had  lost  her  her  freedom. 
It  was  this  class  which  unwillingly  signed  the  Treaty 
of  Versailles.  It  had  learned  nothing  and  had  for¬ 
gotten  nothing.  Its  ideal  is  mediaeval  Poland.  It 
still  lives  on  warfare,  Jew-baiting,  and  vainglory. 
Incompetent  to  put  its  house  in  order,  to  face  the 
realities  of  a  genuine  reconstruction,  its  imperialistic 
aggression  aroused  the  bitter  enmity  of  Esthonia,  Latvia, 
and  Lithuania,  and  then  proceeded  to  draw  the  usual 
red  herring  across  its  track  by  charging  the  Jews 
with  Bolshevism,  by  permitting — if  not  inciting — 
and  condoning  pogroms,  and  by  lying  about,  them 
under  investigation.  From  the  reports  brought  back 
both  by  Mr.  Henry  Morgenthau  and  Sir  Stuart  Samuel 
the  inference  is  inescapable  that  the  Polish  Government, 
in  the  interests  of  the  class  which  it  represents,  is 
sabotaging  the  treaty  upon  which  Polish  independence 
is  conditioned.  It  is  sabotaging  the  treaty  knowingly 
and  with  impunity,  for  the  League  of  Nations  is  aborted. 


ZIONISM  AND  WORLD  POLITICS 

and  the  hands  of  the  Great  Powers  are  bound.  Mean¬ 
while,  although  grudging  economic  reforms  were  grudg¬ 
ingly  enacted,  they  were  not  enforced;  starvation 
and  disease  were  as  extensive  among  the  masses  as 
was  luxury  among  the  classes;  discontent  became  so 
intense  as  to  require  a  more  adventurous  and  less- 
habitual  safety-valve  than  Jew-baiting.  The  obvious 
one  was  the  traditional  high  moral  business  of  defend¬ 
ing  the  marches  of  civilization — now  against  Soviet 
Russia,  as  once  against  the  Turks.  So  there  was 
launched  a  brazen  and  merry  war  of  unmitigated  ag¬ 
gression  in  the  interests  of  the  land-barons  who  had 
holdings  beyond  the  boundaries  of  ethnographic 
Poland.  Its  spirit  is  an  inflated  nationalism  which 
misery  and  disaster  must  inevitably  explode.  Its 
sinews  are  the  military  and  financial  charity  of  France 
and  England  and  the  United  States.  Its  victim  is  the 
one  country  upon  whose  markets  the  rehabilitation 
of  Poland  and  her  development  as  an  industrial  state 
most  of  all  depends.  The  will  of  Poland  to  fight 
Russia  depends  on  the  survival  of  ShlaJchta  control; 
the  strength  of  Poland  to  fight  Russia  depends  upon 
either  French  suzerainty  or  commerce  with  Russia; 
and  commerce  with  Soviet  Russia  is  bound  to  mitigate 
if  not  to  abolish  Shlakhta  rule  and  to  render  war  between 
Poland  and  Russia  progressively  more  difficult.  French 
imperialism  has  played  very  stupidly  in  eastern 
Europe.  It  has  played  stupidly  because  it  has  ignored, 
wilfully,  the  conditions  upon  which  strength  depends 
in  an  industrialized  world. 

The  extraordinary  blindness  of  the  imperialistic 
policy  for  central  Europe  has  been  even  more  c  onspicu- 
ous  in  the  fate  of  Little  Russia  or  Ukrainia,  This 


POLAND,  UKRAINIA,  HUNGARY,  ETC.  223 

unhappy  land  was  conceived  of,  together  with  Poland, 
as  a  principal  instrument  in  the  establishment  of  the 
Gallic  hegemony  of  the  continent.  Victim,  until  the 
successful  Chmelnitzki  uprising,  of  the  traditional 
practices  of  the  Polish  overlordship,  it  united,  as  in¬ 
surance  against  the  repetition  of  the  terrible  Polish 
exploitation,  with  Great  Russia,  in  1654.  Only  eastern 
Galicia,  with  its  six  million  Ruthenians,  remained  in 
Polish  hands,  and  passed  at  the  partition  under  the 
dominion  of  the  Austrian  crown.  Bitterly  inimical 
to  the  Poles  by  tradition,  although  closer  to  them  than 
to  the  Russo-Ruthenians  in  religion  (they  are  Uniate 
Roman  Catholics)  the  Ruthenians  of  Galicia,  with  the 
encouragement  of  the  Austrian  Government,  retained 
and  developed  their  linguistic  and  cultural  traditions 
and  their  nationalist  aspirations.  During  the  war  they 
became  the  agents  and  centre  of  German  anti-Russian 
propaganda  in  Ukrainia,  and  of  Russian  anti-German 
propaganda  in  Galicia.  They  acquiesced  in  the  German 
project  of  a  united  and  autonomous  Ukrainia  under  Aus¬ 
trian  hegemony.  This  project  was  to  some  degree  carried 
out.  An  independent  Ukrainia,  protected  by  German 
arms,  was  in  fact  established  under  the  Hetman  Skorop- 
adski,  and  the  recognition  of  this  independence  was 
exacted  in  the  Treaty  of  Brest-Litovsk.  The  Treaty  of 
Versailles  having  abrogated  the  arrangements  of  Brest- 
Litovsk,  the  Ruthenians  of  Galicia,  instead  of  being 
joined  with  their  own  people  of  the  Ukraine,  fell  again 
under  the  dominion  of  the  Poles,  unsecured  by  anything 
except  the  inefficacious  provisions  regarding  the  security 
and  freedom  of  national  minorities.  In  Ukrainia  proper 
Skoropadski  was  displaced  by  Petliura.  And  then  the 
shattering  of  that  unhappy  land  began. 


224  ZIONISM  AND  WORLD  POLITICS 


A  wide  alluvial  plain,  watered  by  three  great  rivers, 
Ukraina  is  one  of  the  granaries  of  Europe.  Like  the 
larger  part  of  Poland  it  is  flat  land,  without  natural 
barriers.  The  population  is  mostly  a  peasantry,  who 
at  various  times  have  been  members  or  victims  of  the 
Cossack  bands.  The  cities — Kiev,  Kishinev,  Ekate- 
rinoslav,  Kherson,  Odessa — all  have  a  very  large  Jewish 
population.  Prior  to  the  war,  there  were  in  all  about 
3,000,000  Jews  in  this  very  considerable  and  important 
portion  of  the  old  Russian  Empire.  There,  also,  they 
composed  economically  the  commercial  and  industrial 
class.  Politically,  they  were,  after  Versailles,  sub¬ 
jected  to  the  traditional  use  of  pawns  in  the  political 
game  that  was  being  played  out  in  the  Ukraine. 

The  motives  in  the  game  were  the  anti-Bolshevism 
of  the  Allies,  the  mediaeval  imperialism  of  the  Poles, 
and  the  nationalism  of  the  Ukrainian  National  Council. 
This  nationalism  expressed  itself  in  the  government 
of  Petliura — the  so-called  Directorate — and  took  force 
in  an  army  made  up  largely  of  demobilized  peasants 
and  khlops.  The  anti-Bolshevism  of  the  Allies  had 
for  its  instrument  the  reactionary  government  and 
volunteer  army  of  Denikine.  This  person  and  his 
pretensions  were  hated  by  the  Ukrainian  khlops  even 
more  than  the  Poles.  Hence,  when  in  January,  1919, 
Petliura’s  forces  were  defeated  by  the  armies  of  the 
Soviet  Republic,  the  Ukrainian  population  was  dis¬ 
posed  to  welcome  the  Soviet  regime  in  spite  of  the 
hardships  of  an  imposed  communism.  Petliura’s  troops, 
meanwhile,  broke  up  into  bands,  each  under  a  Hetman, 
and  proceeded — not  without  an  understanding  with 
what  had  escaped  of  the  Petliura  government  into 
Galicia — to  ravage  the  unarmed  Jewish  populations 


POLAND,  UKRAINIA,  HUNGARY,  ETC.  225 

in  the  cities  and  villages.  The  justification  offered 
was  the  claim  that  the  Jews  were  Bolsheviks  and  that 
they  were  responsible  for  the  defeat  of  the  Petliura 
forces  at  the  hands  of  the  Soviet  Republic.  A  proc¬ 
lamation  of  the  Hetman  Simchenko  called  for  “death 
for  the  old  because  they  brought  up  Bolsheviks;  death 
to  the  women  for  having  brought  them  into  the  world; 
death  to  the  children  so  that  they  may  not  grow  up 
into  Bolsheviks!” 

To  the  Jews,  the  Ukraine  of  1920  reduplicated 
the  Ukraine  of  1648.  By  July  of  that  year  there  had 
been  2,000  pogroms;  259,000  Jews  had  been  killed, 
250,000  more  had  died  of  causes  related  to  the  pogroms; 
innumerable  capital  levies  had  been  made,  houses 
and  streets  destroyed  and  towns  raided.  The  Jews 
had  been  reduced  to  a  condition  of  terror  and  disinte¬ 
gration  without  parallel  even  in  their  own  history. 
In  this  reduction,  the  policy  and  army  of  Denikine  had 
a  role  no  less  murderously  distinguished.  Nor  did  the 
Poles  fail  to  live  up  to  the  standards  set  by  their 
religious  traditions  and  secular  practices.  With  a 
claim  to  East  Galicia  of  the  most  mythical  sort,  they 
established  themselves  in  Lemberg  by  force,  precipitat¬ 
ing  immediately  their  old  conflict  with  the  Ruthenians 
(who  insisted  on  their  solidarity  with  the  Ukraine),  or¬ 
ganizing  and  encouraging  pogroms.  When  Petliura, 
desperate,  invited  the  alliance  of  the  Poles  in  return  for 
the  recognition  of  their  claims  to  East  Galicia,  the 
Ruthenians  repudiated  him  for  Denikine.  But  they 
found  Denikine  intolerable,  and  in  the  end  returned  to 
Petliura,  who  meanwhile,  calling  upon  the  hetmans 
of  the  various  bands  to  rejoin  him,  marched  with 
Pilsudski  into  Kiev.  The  ultimate  victory  of  the 


226  ZIONISM  AND  WORLD  POLITICS 

Soviet  Republic  is  a  foregone  conclusion.  The  rein¬ 
corporation  of  Ukrainia,  or  an  intimate  economic  union 
between  the  Soviet  Republic  and  an  autonomous 
Ukrainians  a  foregone  conclusion.  By  the  vigour  of 
its  military  discipline,  by  its  adequate  police  and  sani¬ 
tary  measures,  by  the  security  it  assures  to  life,  and 
within  the  limits  of  its  rigid  equalitarian  programme, 
to  property,  the  Republic  has  made  itself  the  least 
disagreeable  of  the  political  alternatives  to  all  sections 
of  the  population  of  the  Ukraine. 

But  the  most  ironic  consequences  of  the  peace  and 
its  administration  are  to  be  seen  in  Hungary.  Invaded 
after  the  conclusion  of  the  armistice  of  November  4, 
1918,  by  Serbian,  Czecho-Slovak,  and  Rumanian  armies, 
only  five  of  her  sixty -three  counties  were  free  of  enemy 
occupation.  This  occupation  rendered  impossible  elec¬ 
tions  for  a  constituent  assembly,  and  cut  off  the  great 
city  of  Buda-Pesth,  her  population  more  than  doubled 
by  refugees,  from  medicine,  fuels,  raw  materials,  and 
food.  Protests  to  Paris  were  of  no  avail.  The  Karolyi 
government,  postulated  upon  the  Wilsonian  policy, 
found  itself  unable  to  withstand  the  attacks  of  mon¬ 
archists  and  counter-revolutionaries  on  the  one  hand 
and  communists  on  the  other.  Hungary,  like  Poland, 
with  which  it  has  great  religious  and  moral  kinship, 
had  in  the  course  of  the  preceding  generation  been 
undergoing  industrialization.  With  industrialization 
had  come  an  intellectual  revival  in  which  the  centre 
of  Hungarian  attention  shifted  from  a  rather  narrow 
and  turbid  clericalist  nationalism  to  a  Europeanism 
like  that  of  the  more  European  and  western  peoples. 

The  leaders  in  this  “Western”  movement  had  been, 
numerously  and  conspicuously,  “Hungarians  of  Jewish 


POLAND,  UKRAINIA,  HUNGARY,  ETC.  227 

blood,”  who  constitute  a  very  large  portion  of  the  middle 
and  intellectual  class  of  the  land.  With  the  Jewish 
communities  of  Hungary  from  which  they  sprang  they 
had  nothing  whatsoever  to  do.  Assimilated  and 
passionate  Magyars,  they  figured  as  conspicuously 
in  the  industrial  and  political  movements  that  were 
the  correlates  of  the  literary,  as  they  did  in  the  literary. 
Under  the  Hapsburgs,  the  journals  they  edited,  and 
the  groups  and  parties  they  led  and  instructed,  de¬ 
veloped  into  centres  of  liberal  and  radical  opposition. 
When,  because  of  the  stress  of  the  failure  of  the  Karolyi 
government  to  meet  the  situation  created  by  the  bad 
faith  of  the  Supreme  Council  and  its  agents,  the  move¬ 
ment  toward  Communism  began,  it  began  naturally  in 
connection  with  these  journals  and  organizations. 
Neither  political  nor  military  action  was  able  to  quash 
the  movement.  Deportation  of  Bolshevist  agitators — 
ordered  by  the  French — did  not  reduce  it;  nor  did 
imprisonment  reduce  it.  Demobilized  soldiers  without 
jobs,  workmen  unemployed  because  the  Allied  block¬ 
ade  cut  off  raw  materials  and  fuel,  agricultural  labourers 
driven  to  town  by  the  enemy  occupation  flocked  to 
the  Soviet  standards.  Even  the  attempt  at  calling 
elections — in  spite  of  the  difficulty  created  by  the 
occupation — and  passing  agrarian  reforms  failed  to 
stem  the  tide.  The  communist  revolution  in  Hungary 
was  the  result  of  a  general  mass-movement  and  ex¬ 
pressive  of  the  will  of  the  Hungarian  people. 

The  government  this  revolution  established  was  a 
dictatorship  not  purely  communist — it  was  a  coalition 
between  the  communists  and  the  social  democrats. 
It  avoided,  as  well  as  it  could,  the  errors  of  the  Russian 
Soviet  Republic.  It  tried  to  upset  as  little  as  possible 


228  ZIONISM  AND  WORLD  POLITICS 


the  going  economy  of  the  country.  Of  course,  it 
expropriated  those  who  lived  on  rent,  profits,  and  in¬ 
terest,  and  sought  to  put  them  to  work.  Rut  it  kept 
in  its  own  employ  the  managements  of  the  industries 
and  of  the  great  estates;  it  recognized  and  rewarded 
individual  superiorities  in  capacity  and  responsibility; 
and  it  planned  to  couple  with  the  gradual  democratiza¬ 
tion  of  agriculture  and  industry  the  Taylor  system 
and  piece  work.  It  gave  the  same  passionate  attention 
to  the  education  of  the  masses  as  the  Russian  Govern¬ 
ment,  and  it  honoured  and  rewarded  the  teachers 
by  assigning  them  the  highest  salaries  allowable  under 
the  constitution,  salaries  equal  to  those  of  the  members 
of  the  government  themselves. 

Its  most  difficult  stumbling-block  was  the  same  as 
in  Russia — the  peasants  and  the  peasant  psychology. 
Mainly  tenantry  or  agricultural  workers  on  great 
estates,  entirely  under  the  dominion  of  an  illiterate 
and  intriguing  Roman  Catholic  clergy,  suffused  with 
anti-Semitism,  these  peasants  were  eager  to  possess  the 
land,  but  were  not  eager  to  communize  its  management 
and  control.  The  government  of  Bela  Kun  tried  to 
deal  with  them  as  tactfully  as  possible.  It  refrained 
from  “socializing”  the  small  farmers.  It  worked  the 
large  estates  in  the  old  way  but  with  a  new  morale. 
It  looked  to  education  and  the  lapse  of  time  to  effect 
the  desired  modifications  in  the  mentality  of  this  mass 
of  the  population  too  great  to  be  coerced  and  too  slow- 
witted  to  be  convinced.  General  Smuts,  sent  from 
Paris  to  survey  the  situation,  reported  himself  “well- 
impressed.” 

The  fact  was,  that  the  government  of  Bela  Kun  was 
making  an  experiment,  within  the  limits  of  reasonable 


POLAND,  UKRAINIA,  HUNGARY,  ETC.  229 

control,  in  easing  the  adjustment  and  interpenetration 
of  industrial  with  agricultural  economy.  It  was  mak¬ 
ing  this  experiment  under  insuperable  difficulties — 
without  fuel  or  raw  materials  in  the  factories  and  with 
insufficient  food  in  the  cities.  The  success  or  failure 
of  this  experiment  under  its  own  weight  and  strength 
would  have  been  a  distinct  service  to  mankind,  and 
every  facility  ought  to  have  been  supplied  it  to  work 
itself  out  in  peace.  But  the  Supreme  Council  was  as 
terrified  by  “Bolshevism”  as,  a  century  before,  the 
Holy  Alliance  had  been  terrified  by  “democracy.” 
When  the  communist  arms  were  victorious  over 
Czecho-Slovakia  and  had  overrun  two  thirds  of  Slovakia 
it  offered  Bela  Kun  a  definitive  peace  provided  he  would 
surrender  all  the  fruits  of  his  victory  and  withdraw  his 
troops.  But  when  he  did  what  it  wished  and  with¬ 
drew  his  troops,  it  repudiated  the  offer  as  a  “clerical 
error.”  Turning  then  in  despair  against  the  other 
invader — the  Rumanian  who  also  was  occupying 
Hungary  in  violation  of  the  armistice — with  a  force 
half  his  size,  Kun  suffered  a  calamitous  defeat  and 
the  Rumanians  marched  into  Buda-Pesth.  Paris 
then  offered  the  Social  Democrats  of  the  Kun  govern¬ 
ment  to  lift  the  blockade  if  Kun  would  resign.  To 
save  his  fellow-countrymen  Kun  did  resign  and  a 
moderate  socialist  government  replaced  his.  But 
the  whole  action  was  nullified  by  the  unspeakable 
Rumanians.  They  organized  a  terror  against  the 
“communists,”  in  a  month  killing  6,000  intellectuals 
and  Jews.  They  looted  the  country  with  a  thorough¬ 
ness  beside  which  the  Germans  in  Belgium — even  in 
the  earliest  days — are  as  innocent  as  new-born  babes. 
They  propagated  anti-Semitism  and  carried  out  po- 


230  ZIONISM  AND  WORLD  POLITICS 


groms.  They  encouraged  counter-revolutionaries,  who 
brought  the  Archduke  Joseph  into  power. 

This  was  more  than  even  the  Supreme  Council — 
certainly  than  Mr.  Wilson,  whose  anti-monarchism 
at  least  is  adamant — could  tolerate.  Joseph  was 
driven  out  and  a  new  government,  or  a  succession  of 
them,  was  installed.  The  counter-revolution,  with 
Horthy  for  its  figurehead,  placed  itself  forcefully 
in  the  saddle.  The  constitutional  reforms  created  by 
the  Karolyi  government  and  the  communists  were 
abolished.  A  narrow  franchise  was  established  and 
the  monarchical  principle  reaffirmed.  Freemasonry, 
for  reasons  best  known  to  the  clericals,  was  suppressed. 
The  White  Terror  was  amplified  into  a  pogrom.  The 
party  “ Awakened  Magyars”  was  organized.  Officers 
of  the  late  imperial  army,  persons  with  titles,  feudal 
landlords,  distinguished  Catholics,  were  gathered 
into  terrorist  bands,  who  murdered,  raped,  and  stole 
and  committed  unspeakable  outrages  upon  workmen, 
Socialists  and  Jews,  particularly  Jews.  The  press 
was  subjected  to  a  rigid  censorship.  Martial  law  was 
declared.  The  peasantry  were  reduced  to  a  state 
infinitely  more  miserable  than  under  the  autocratic 
Communist  regime,  and  far  worse  than  under  the 
Hapsburgs.  The  workmen  and  their  organizations 
were  proscribed.  Unparalleled  anti-Jewish  laws  were 
enacted.  An  arrangement  was  made  with  the  Entente, 
perhaps  with  France  alone,  by  which  Hungary  is  to 
maintain  a  large  army  against  the  Bolsheviks.  The 
details  of  the  witches’  Sabbath  which  the  counter¬ 
revolution  instituted  and  maintained  in  Hungary 
may  be  read  in  the  separate  reports  of  the  commissions 
of  inquiry  sent  by  the  International  Federation  of 


POLAND,  UKRAINIA,  HUNGARY,  ETC.  231 

Trades  Unions  and  the  British  Labour  Party.  The 
findings  of  both  led  to  the  reimposition  of  the  blockade 
upon  Hungary  until  the  White  Terror  should  cease  and 
freedom  and  security  be  restored.  This  blockade 
was  an  entirely  new  thing  in  the  history  of  civilization. 
It  was  not  a  blockade  by  governments  but  by  the  or¬ 
ganized  workers  of  the  world.  It  was  common  interna¬ 
tional  action  postulated  upon  the  economy  of  industry 
and  the  consciousness  of  solidarity,  power,  and  inter¬ 
dependence  which  the  experience  of  the  war  has  bred 
among  the  trade-unionists  of  Europe.  It  is  these  who, 
having  discovered  how,  have  become  the  effective 
champions  of  a  Europe  safe  for  democracy. 

The  philosophy  and  ideal  which  underlie  the  tyran¬ 
nous  terror  of  Hungary  are  those  of  the  class  which 
more  than  any  other  had  served  to  precipitate  the 
Great  War.  It  has  simply  transferred  its  animus  from 
the  Slavs  and  Rumanians,  whom  the  peace  has  re¬ 
moved  from  its  power,  to  the  Jews.  It  exhibits  a 
mediaeval  zest  in  the  obscenities  it  commits  upon  them. 
For  it  has  the  mediaeval  mind.  It  is  the  class  of 
clericals  and  landlords,  in  no  important  way  differing 
from  the  similar  class  in  Poland.  It  hates  not  com¬ 
munism  alone.  It  is  inimical  to  mere  democracy. 
It  desires  the  feudal  respect  for  authority,  the  peonized 
peasant  and  exploited  workman.  It  wants  the  exter¬ 
mination  of  the  Jews.  It  wants  to  establish  in  Hungary 
a  “Christian  national  system”  by  which  it  means 
a  system  wherein  its  own  privileges  will  be  forever 
secure.  Its  identification  of  anti-Semitism  with  anti- 
Bolshevism  is  no  accident.  In  Hungary  also  the  Jew 
is  being  put  to  the  traditional  use  of  scapegoat. 

The  role  of  the  Rumanians  in  the  creation  and  main- 


232  ZIONISM  AND  WORLD  POLITICS 


tenance  of  this  situation  is  one  of  the  blackest  spots 
in  the  black  history  of  the  rulers  of  that  land.  It  is  a 
role  dictated  by  the  need  to  divert  public  attention 
from  the  sabotaged  fulfilment  of  promised  economic 
reforms,  and  to  find  an  outlet  for  the  anger  caused 
among  the  unspeakable  land-barons  and  bureaucracy 
by  the  minority  clauses  in  the  peace  treaty.  Rumania, 
more  than  any  other  Balkan  country,  has  been  a  land¬ 
lord’s  paradise.  The  exploitation  of  the  peasant  has 
been  unutterably  thorough,  in  fact,  mediaeval,  and 
the  development  of  a  political  opposition  has  been  a 
function  of  the  bitter  need  of  the  peasants.  Prior 
to  Rumanian  participation  in  the  Great  War,  this 
need  was  on  the  point  of  compelling  agrarian  reform. 
The  instability  of  the  country  was  then  so  great  that 
even  a  revision  of  the  anti- Jewish  laws  was  pledged, 
and  this  was  bound  up  with  the  enfranchisement  of 
the  peasant.  The  Rumanian  bargain  with  the  En¬ 
tente,  by  which  Rumania  entered  the  war  in  return 
for  the  promise  of  an  “ ethnic  Rumania”  at  the  ex¬ 
pense  of  Austria-Hungary  and  Russia,  was  not  popular 
with  the  people.  The  disastrous  campaign  of  the 
Rumanian  armies  was  due  not  only  to  deficient  general¬ 
ship  and  Russian  bureaucratic  treachery  but  to 
defective  morale.  In  the  peace  of  Bucharest  the 
Germans  took  advantage  of  this  situation  to  bind 
the  Rumanian  upper  classes  to  themselves  in  terms 
of  benefits.  The  rights  of  the  Jews  which  the  treaty 
purported  to  conserve  were  conserved  in  the  spirit 
and  practice  of  the  Rumanian  constitution  and  the 
Rumanian  land-barons.  The  treaty  and  the  German 
occupation  offered  a  complete  alibi  for  the  failure 
to  execute  the  promised  reforms;  a  dangerous  failure, 


POLAND,  UKRAINIA,  HUNGARY,  ETC.  233 

in  view  of  the  close  connection  between  defeat  and 
revolution.  This  connection  the  government  of  Ru¬ 
mania  understood.  It  was  afraid  to  demobilize.  Its 
swift  invasion  and  looting  of  Hungary,  its  violation 
of  the  terms  of  the  armistice,  its  hide-and-seek  policy 
with  the  Peace  Conference  were  designed  to  neutralize 
the  psychological  consequences  of  defeat  with  at  least 
the  simulation  of  victory — even  over  an  outnumbered, 
disarmed,  and  beaten  foe.  Its  anti-Semitism  in  Hun¬ 
gary  was  part  and  parcel  of  the  same  policy  by  which 
it  tried  to  escape  accepting  the  minority-rights  treaty, 
and  after  accepting  it,  sought  to  delay  and  sabotage 
its  enactment  by  postponing  the  election  of  a  new 
parliament  to  ratify  it,  among  the  other  familiar  de¬ 
vices  of  diplomatic  sabotage. 

In  Rumania,  as  in  other  states,  the  cause  of  the  Jews 
and  the  cause  of  the  masses  of  the  people  are  identical, 
the  status  of  the  former  is  a  direct  index  of  the  freedom 
and  culture  of  the  latter.  Now,  with  the  accession  of 
Bessarabia  and  Transylvania  the  Rumanian  Govern¬ 
ment  acquired  dominion  over  more  than  500,000  addi¬ 
tional  Jews.  The  total  number  of  Jews  within  the 
Rumanian  borders  and  entitled  to  citizenship  becomes 
well-nigh  a  million.  Should  the  traditional  Rumanian 
rule  be  applied  to  them,  they  would  be  automatically 
outlawed.  For  the  government  of  Rumania,  in  order 
to  evade  the  application  of  articles  43  and  44  of  the 
Treaty  of  Berlin  by  which,  in  1878,  Rumania  became 
an  independent  kingdom,  formulated  into  law  what 
under  the  Christian  dispensation  had  been  the  social 
position  of  the  Jews  in  Europe  since  their  disfranchise¬ 
ment  in  the  fourth  century  by  the  Emperor  Constantius. 
It  designated  the  Jews  as  “  aliens  without  foreign 


234  ZIONISM  AND  WORLD  POLITICS 


protection” — that  is,  as  aliens  “in  the  eyes  of  the 
law  .  .  .  even  without  the  protection  of  alienage, 

since  allegiance  on  their  part  to  any  other  government 
is  not  recognized.  They  were  literally  looked  upon  as 

men  without  a  country,”1  without  opportunity,  without 

% 

hope,  without  redress. 

Only  the  most  explicit  guarantees  could  save  minori¬ 
ties  in  a  land  of  so  black  and  so  ingenious  a  mediaeval  - 
ism.  These  guarantees  were  given,  not  voluntarily. 
That  the  ruling  classes  will  continue  to  sabotage  them 
is  a  foregone  conclusion.  They  face  a  repetition,  on  a 
larger  scale,  of  the  revolution  of  1907.  Their  habits 
of  mind  are  such  that  inevitably  they  will  evade  the 
task  of  eradicating  the  causes  of  social  unrest,  which 
alone  can  solve  the  problem;  they  will  merely  seek  to 
divert  attention  by  spreading  sentiments  and  organizing 
action  against  the  Jews. 

Poland,  the  Ukraine,  Hungary,  Rumania — these  lands 
are  all  lands  of  primarily  an  agrarian  economy,  with  no 
middle  class  to  speak  of,  backward,  illiterate,  ruled  by 
land-barons  and  exploited  by  priests;  the  most  ad¬ 
vanced  of  them  is  only  at  the  beginnings  of  its  democ¬ 
racy — even  in  the  eighteenth-century  sense  of  that 
term.  A  free  government  dedicated  to  the  protection 
and  development  of  the  Rousseauist- Jeffersonian  “in¬ 
alienable  rights,”  of  “life,  liberty,  and  the  pursuit 
of  happiness”  would,  with  the  best  good-will,  still  have 
to  take  into  consideration  habits  of  thought  and  feeling, 
the  inertias  of  tradition  and  their  modification  by  the 
inescapable  economic  pressure  and  psychological  in¬ 
fluence  of  the  automatic  machine  upon  its  people. 

Memorial  to  President  Wilson  by  representatives  of  the  American 
Jewish  Congress,  March,  1919. 


POLAND,  UKRAINIA,  HUNGARY,  ETC.  235 

It  would  have  to  depend  upon  rigorous  preventive 
justice,  education,  and  industrialization  to  create 
new  habits  and  to  establish  a  new  ideology  which  in 
course  of  time  should  save  the  people  and  prevent 
Europe  from  going  shipwreck.  That  they  might  be 
destined  to  success  may  be  gathered  from  the  experi¬ 
ence  of  Czecho-Slovakia  and  of  the  short-lived  Magyar 
Commune.  Now  the  governments  of  Poland  and 
Rumania  and  Hungary  are  governments  of  and  for  a 
class,  not  a  people,  and  the  Ukraine  has  been  the 
battlefield  of  opposed  interests  and  ideologies  without 
regard  to  its  people.  Given  the  actualities  of  the 
situation,  hence,  their  organized  anti-Semitism  and 
their  fathering  of  Bolshevism  upon  the  Jews  were 
deducible  phenomena.  Not  so  easily  deducible  is 
the  appearance  of  the  same  phenomena,  in  forms 
somewhat  less  virulent,  also  in  industrialized  countries 
like  Germany  and  German  Austria.  Their  scope  and 
extent  varied  with  the  increase  of  hunger,  insecurity, 
and  disease,  and  the  correlative  reactionary  reversions 
to  more  primitive  states  of  mind  which  accompany  these. 
In  these  countries,  too,  there  has  been  manifest  the 
witch-hunting  tendency  to  attribute  the  countries’ 
ills  to  the  Jews.  Moreover,  anti-Semitic  sentiment 
and  propaganda  appeared  in  France  and  even  in  England 
and  America.  Wherever  members  of  the  old  regime 
in  Russia,  in  Germany,  or  elsewhere  in  central  Europe 
found  or  retained  a  footing  they  generated  or  brought 
with  them  and  sought  to  spread  this  social  poison 
surviving  from  the  Middle  Ages. 

A  comic  opera  item  in  the  activities  of  this  conspiracy 
was  the  revival  and  extensive  use  of  the  so-called 
“Protocols  of  the  Elders  of  Zion.”  These  protocols 


236  ZIONISM  AND  WORLD  POLITICS 


are  the  last  chapter  in  a  typical  book  by  a  reputed 
typical  paranoid  Russian  mystic,  one  Nilus,  in  which 
Nilus  traces  a  divine  comedy  of  approved  mediaeval 
type  in  terms  of  his  own  mystical  experiences,  and 
those  of  his  friends  and  his  time,  supported  by  docu¬ 
ments  manufactured  ad  hoc .  An  Orthodox  and  a 
Russian,  he  makes  the  Jews  the  devil  of  the  comedy, 
ascribing  to  them  a  conspiracy  to  rule  the  world.  The 
sources  of  his  fantasy  may  well  be  a  book  by  one 
Goedsche,  a  convicted  forger,  called  “  Goeta,  Warschau 
and  Dueppel,”  extensively  used  by  Junker  anti-Semites 
in  Germany  and  similarly  worked  in  Russian  form  by  the 
Tsarist  government  during  the  troubles  of  1905-1906. 
Its  present  use  in  the  English-speaking  world  is  as¬ 
sociated  with  a  person  calling  himself  Frazier  Curtis, 
operating  from  London,  and  one  Henry  Ford,  a  very 
rich  maker  of  cheap  automobiles  who  gave  the  non¬ 
sense  extensive  circulation  through  his  paper,  the 
Dearborn  Independent,  published  at  Dearborn,  near 
Detroit,  U.  S.  A.  It  was  first  published  in  the  Morning 
Post ,  of  London.  Regarding  it,  Mr.  Lucien  Wolf  writes 
in  the  Manchester  Guardian: 

The  prodigious  essay  on  “The  Cause  of  World  Unrest ” 
which  the  Morning  Post  has  lately  published  in  seventeen 
articles  and  some  sixty  columns  of  printed  matter  is  a  docu¬ 
ment  on  which  the  student  of  political  thought  in  England 
will  dwell  sadly.  Over  a  century  ago,  in  world  circumstances 
of  startling  similarity  and  almost  from  the  same  party 
standpoint,  Burke  gave  us,  in  his  “Causes  of  the  Present 
Discontents,”  his  “Reflections,”  and  his  “Regicide  Peace,” 
a  large  and  stately  piece  of  political  philosophy.  To-day 
the  leading  organ  of  Conservative  opinion  in  this  country 
can  only  expound  a  sort  of  political  demonology,  borrowed 
partly  from  the  obscurantists  of  Bourbon  Clericalism  and 


POLAND,  UKRAINIA,  HUNGARY,  ETC.  237 


partly  from  the  fanatics  of  Hohenzollern  Anti-Semitism. 
It  would  be  merciful  to  pass  by  this  strange  effort  in  silence, 
but  unfortunately  there  is  reason  to  believe  that  with  all 
its  grotesqueness,  it  is  calculated  to  work  a  good  deal  of 
mischief.  Credulous  and  vicious  people  are  still  abundant, 
and  they  are  not  confined  to  the  crowd.  Mr.  Winston 
Churchill  has  darkly  hinted  that  he  reads  the  signs  of  the 
times  much  in  the  same  way  as  the  Morning  Post ,  and  a 
curious  story  is  current  that  the  translation  of  the  Russian 
forgery  on  which  the  theory  of  that  journal  mainly  rests 
was  actually  made  in  the  Intelligence  Department  of  the 
War  Office.  Then  there  are  Mr.  Chesterton  and  Mr. 
Belloc  and  quite  a  conventicle  of  smaller  fry  who  have  been 
vainly  preaching  the  same  apocalypse  for  years.  The 
Morning  Post  may  bring  them  recruits,  and  that  assuredly 
is  not  desirable. 

The  theory  of  the  Morning  Post  may  be  briefly  stated. 
Its  fundamental  contention  is  that  all  political  unrest  is 
artificial.  It  is  a  product  of  the  Hidden  Hand  which  is 
now  revealed  to  us  as  a  “Formidable  Sect”  encompassing 
the  world.  This  sect  has  been  at  its  present  work  for  at 
least  a  hundred  and  fifty  years.  The  French  Revolution 
was  contrived  by  it,  as  well  as  all  the  subordinate  revolutions 
down  to  our  own  time.  Trade  Unionism,  Socialism,  Syndic¬ 
alism,  Bolshevism,  Sinn  Fein,  Indian  Nationalism,  and  their 
analogues  in  every  part  of  the  globe  are  outward  and  visible 
signs  of  its  sinister  activity.  That  there  are  social  grievances 
and  even  evils  at  the  root  of  this  unrest  is  not  denied,  but 
they  are  as  artificial  as  the  unrest  itself.  They  have  all  been 
deliberately  brought  about  by  the  Hidden  Hand  in  order 
to  stir  up  revolt  against  the  Throne  and  Altar.  The  way 
in  which  it  is  done  is  a  little  complicated.  Behind  the 
restless  and  seditious  movements  which  we  all  know  there 
is  a  secret  revolutionary  organization  in  the  shape  of  Free¬ 
masonry.  But  this  is  only  intermediate,  for  Freemasonry 
itself,  through  some  obscure  transaction  between  the  Temp¬ 
lars  and  the  Old  Man  of  the  Mountain,  was  created  by 
the  “Formidable  Sect,”  and  is  wholly,  though  perhaps  un¬ 
consciously,  under  its  control. 


238  ZIONISM  AND  WORLD  POLITICS 


Now  what  is  this  “Formidable  Sect”?  It  is  no  other 
than  the  Jews.  Those  ancient  enemies  of  the  human  race 
are  alleged  to  be  far  more  daring  and  dynamic  in  evil-doing 
than  is  generally  supposed.  Throughout  their  world-wide 
Dispersion  they  have  secretly  preserved  their  old  political 
organization,  and  they  have  used  it — and  are  still  using  it — 
with  deadly  persistency  to  overturn  the  established  Christian 
order  of  things  and  to  found  in  its  place  a  universal  Jewish 
dominion  under  the  sceptre  of  a  Sovereign  of  the  House  of 
David.  The  Jews  are,  in  short,  the  “cause  of  the  world 
unrest.” 

There  is  nothing  new  in  this  theory  except  the  claim  of 
its  authors  to  have  produced  documentary  proof  of  its  final 
development — that  is,  of  its  Jewish  aspect.  It  was  invented 
over  a  century  ago,  as  it  has  been  resurrected  to-day,  to 
explain  the  unfamiliar  international  character  of  the  pre¬ 
vailing  unrest.  The  clergy  and  the  nobility  of  the  ancien 
regime  were  as  little  capable  as  the  Morning  Post  tO-day 
of  understanding  the  natural  causes  of  this  phenomenon. 
And  yet  they  were  by  no  means  obscure.  The  French 
Revolution,  as  Burke  pointed  out,  was  not  a  mere  uprising 
against  local  oppression,  but  a  “revolution  of  doctrine  and 
theoretic  dogma”  which  was  bound  to  find  echoes  beyond 
the  French  frontiers.  In  this  respect  it  resembled  the 
Reformation,  and  also  that  other  “armed  doctrine”  which 
we  know  as  Bolshevism.  Nevertheless,  it  puzzled  the 
Bourbon  apologists,  and,  confusing  cause  and  effect,  they 
became  convinced  that  they  were  in  the  presence  of  an 
international  conspiracy.  The  theory  was  first  propounded 
by  a  Superior  of  the  Seminary  of  Eudists  at  Caen  in  1790, 
but  it  was  afterward  vastly  developed  by  the  Abbe  Barruel 
in  his  “Memoires  sur  le  Jacobinisme,”  by  Robinson  of 
Edinburgh  in  his  “Proofs  of  a  Conspiracy,”  and  by  the 
Chevalier  de  Malet  in  his  “Recherches  Historiques.”  Their 
conclusion  was  that  there  was  a  triple  conspiracy  of  Phi¬ 
losophers,  Freemasons,  and  Illuminati  who  form  an  actual 
sect  aiming  deliberately  and  methodically  at  the  overthrow 
of  the  established  religions  and  Governments  throughout 
Europe.  The  theory  had  a  short  shrift,  though  the  industry 


POLAND,  UKRAINIA,  HUNGARY,  ETC.  239 


of  its  authors  did  much  to  throw  light  on  the  organization 
and  activities  of  the  secret  societies.  So  far  as  the  Free¬ 
masons  and  Illuminati  were  concerned  it  was  easily  demol¬ 
ished  by  the  Earl  of  Moira,  who,  at  a  meeting  of  the  Grand 
Lodge  of  England  in  1800,  showed  convincingly  that  it  was 
a  mare’s  nest.  As  for  the  Philosophers,  no  one  ever  took 
the  charge  against  them  seriously.  For  half  a  century 
scarcely  anything  more  was  heard  of  this  aspect  of  the 
“Formidable  Sect,”  though  meanwhile  the  revolutions  of 
1830  and  1848  had  taken  place.  The  nonsuit  of  Barruel 
was  chose  jugee. 

It  was  revived  in  the  sixties  under  the  influence  of  the 
religious  passions  kindled  by  the  war  for  Italian  unity. 
The  struggle  for  Jewish  emancipation  had  triumphed  all 
over  western  Europe,  and  the  new  citizens  thus  enfranchised 
had  everywhere  cast  in  their  lot  with  the  Liberal  parties. 
This  was  swiftly  and  angrily  noted  by  the  Ultramontane 
polemists,  and  the  old  bogey  of  a  “Formidable  Sect”  began 
to  haunt  them  in  a  new  and  enlarged  form.  In  the  new 
conspiracy  there  was  no  longer  any  talk  of  Philosophers 
and  Illuminati.  Their  place  was  taken  by  Jews  and  Prot¬ 
estants.  The  “Formidable  Sect”  thus  became  a  triple 
alliance  of  Freemasons,  Jews,  and  Protestants  which  was 
said  to  be  directed  by  the  “Grand  Master  Palmerston” 
and  supported  by  the  whole  British  people,  not  only  as  Prot¬ 
estants  but  as  descendants  of  the  Lost  Tribes  of  Israel  and 
the  subjects  of  a  dynasty  claiming  descent  from  the  House 
of  David.  The  chief  protagonist  of  this  stupendous  halluci¬ 
nation  was  M.  Gougenot  des  Mousseaux,  who  in  1869  em¬ 
bodied  it  in  a  volume  entitled  “Le  Juif,  le  Judaisme,  et  la 
Judaisation  des  Peuples  Chretiens.”  From  his  own  ad¬ 
missions,  however,  it  appears  that  he  was  largely  indebted 
to  German  Catholic  inspiration.  Once  again  the  theory 
failed  to  find  support,  and  Gougenot’s  book,  like  the  books 
of  Barruel  and  Robinson,  became  relegated  to  the  literature 
of  forgotten  crazes. 

Later  on,  however,  attempts  to  revive  it  were  made  by 
M.  de  Saint-Andre,  the  Abbe  Chabauty,  M.  Drumont,  M. 
Martin,  and  M.  Copin-Ablancelli,  in  the  full  flood  of  Anti- 


240  ZIONISM  AND  WORLD  POLITICS 


Semitic  agitation  which  had  been  imported  into  France  from 
Germany.  The  only  notable  addition  made  to  the  theory 
by  these  writers  was  the  hypothesis  of  a  secret  Jewish 
government,  transported  from  Jerusalem  into  the  Diaspora, 
which,  throughout  the  ages,  has  never  ceased  to  command 
the  allegiance  of  international  Jewry  and  to  conspire  against 
the  established  order  of  Christian  Society.  Since  1909 
the  agitation  has  become  retransferred  to  the  headquarters 
of  Clerical  Anti-Semitism  in  Vienna  and  Munich,  and  the 
most  recent  works  on  the  subject  with  which  the  Morning 
Post  appears  to  have  mainly  worked,  although  for  obvious 
reasons  it  does  not  acknowledge  them — are  Wichtl’s 
“  Weltfreimaurerei,  Weltrevolution,  Weltrepublik,”  Meister’s 
“Judas  Schuldbuch,”  and  Rosenberg’s  “Die  Spur  des  Judens 
im  Wandel  der  Zeiten,”  all  published  in  1919.  All  this 
literature,  while  expounding  exactly  the  same  theory  as 
that  of  the  Morning  Post ,  is  as  violently  anti-English  as  it  is 
anti-Masonic  and  anti- Jewish. 

This,  then,  is  the  discredited  raw  material  of  the  theory 
hashed  up  as  a  serious  contribution  to  the  grave  political 
preoccupations  of  British  statesmanship  at  this  moment. 
It  will  be  noted,  however,  that  in  the  forms  so  far  referred 
to  it  is  confessedly  a  theory,  resting  at  the  best  on  evidence 
of  a  highly  circumstantial  character.  The  novelty  in  its 
latest  presentation  is  that  an  effort  is  made  to  bolster  it  up 
with  what  is  claimed  to  be  direct  evidence.  This  takes  the 
form  of  a  document  entitled  “The  Protocols  of  the  Learned 
Elders  of  Zion,”  which  was  published  in  an  anonymous 
pamphlet  a  few  months  ago  by  Messrs.  Eyre  and  Spottis- 
woode.  These  protocols  are  alleged  to  be  the  minutes 
of  certain  meetings  of  the  Secret  Directory  of  the  Jewish 
people  held  in  Paris  toward  the  end  of  the  last  century, 
and  they  record  avowals  by  the  Elders,  of  the  very  conspir¬ 
acy  set  forth  hypothetically  by  M  M.  Gougenot  des  Mous- 
seaux  and  Copin-Albancelli.  “In  this  book,”  says  the 
Morning  Post  triumphantly,  “for  the  first  time  we  find  an 
open  declaration  of  the  terrible  conspiracy  of  the  ‘Formida- 
able  Sect.’  ” 

Unhappily  for  those  who  rely  on  it  this  document  is  a 


POLAND,  UKRAINIA,  HUNGARY,  ETC.  241 

clumsy  forgery  which  has  already  been  used  for  the  most 
disreputable  purposes.  It  has  been  known  to  the  Jewish 
community  for  some  years.  The  first  draft  of  it  was  fabri¬ 
cated  in  1868  by  an  official  in  the  Prussian  Post  Office  named 
Hermann  Goedsche,  who  was  dismissed  from  the  service  on 
account  of  more  vulgar  forgeries.  It  was  long  a  stock 
broadsheet  of  the  German  Anti-Semites.  In  1905  it  was 
used  in  Russia  by  the  secret  police  for  pogrom  propaganda, 
and  it  was  afterward  embodied  in  a  politico-apocalyptic 
book  on  Antichrist  by  a  disciple  of  Father  John  of  Cronstadt, 
one  Serge  Nilus,  who  sought  to  show  that  the  old  “For¬ 
midable  Sect”  of  Gougenot  des  Mousseaux,  consisting  of  Jews 
and  Freemasons  under  the  direction  of  England,  was  the 
real  Antichrist.  This  book  was  used  to  persuade  the  credu¬ 
lous  Tsar  to  conclude  a  secret  treaty  with  the  German  Em¬ 
peror  aimed  at  England  and  the  Entente.  In  1918  and  1919 
doctored  typewritten  copies  of  the  protocols,  with  the 
anti-English  passages  carefully  deleted,  were  secretly  cir¬ 
culated  by  emissaries  of  Koltchak’s  and  Denikine’s  intelli¬ 
gence  service  among  Cabinet  Ministers  and  other  officials 
of  the  Allied  and  Associated  Powers,  with  the  object  of  show¬ 
ing  that  Bolshevism  was  an  exclusively  Jewish  creation 
and  that  the  whole  Russian  people  were  innocent  of  it. 
It  was  then  that,  thanks  to  the  American  Department  of 
Justice,  the  Jewish  community  were  made  aware  of  their 
existence.  They  had  already  done  considerable  mischief, 
as  may  be  seen  by  the  propaganda  leaflets  distributed  by 
the  aeroplane  service  of  the  British  armies  at  Archangel 
and  Murmansk  and  certain  oracular  utterances  of  Mr. 
Winston  Churchill  in  a  Sunday  newspaper. 

Last  year  the  idea  occurred  to  certain  enterprising  people 
who  had  been  concerned  in  these  manoeuvres,  and  who  were 
justly  affrighted  by  the  impending  collapse  of  Denikine, 
that  money  might  be  made  out  of  the  protocols.  Accord¬ 
ingly,  certain  of  the  Jewish  Delegations  in  Paris  were  ap¬ 
proached  with  an  intimation  that  these  precious  documents 
were  about  to  be  published,  and  the  kindly  offer  was  made 
to  spare  Israel  this  damning  disclosure  for  the  trifling  sum 
of  £10,000. 


242  ZIONISM  AND  WORLD  POLITICS 


The  upshot  of  the  matter  is  that  the  “Formidable  Sect” 
is  a  German  Anti-Semitic  and  Anglophobe  myth  constructed 
out  of  garbled  history  and  synthetized  by  impudent  forgery. 
How  and  for  what  purpose  it  has  been  foisted  on  the  in¬ 
nocence  of  the  Morning  Post  have  yet  to  be  explained. 

Mr.  Wolf’s  review,  it  will  be  observed,  gives  indica¬ 
tions  of  the  existence  of  something  like  a  gigantic 
international  conspiracy  against  the  Jews  designed 
everywhere  to  link  them  with  the  contemporary  devil 
of  respectable  society — Bolshevism.  Even  in  Palestine, 
the  Bishop  of  Jerusalem,  a  most  respectable  man,  and 
a  pillar  of  the  Church  of  England,  objected  to  Zionism 
because  of  this  imputed  linkage. 

That  the  linkage  is  more  often  than  not  malicious 
and  mythopoetic  does  not  alter  the  fact  that  it  is  made 
— and  that  it  is  believed.  Nor  is  this  fact  much 
modified  by  the  observation  that  the  attribution  is 
invariably  made  by  parties  of  reaction,  clericalism, 
and  privilege  and  that  the  champions  of  the  Jews  are 
the  contemporary  champions  of  the  rights  of  man — 
the  workmen’s  organizations  like  the  British  Labour 
Party,  the  men  of  letters,  the  liberals,  the  scientists. 
We  are  here  face  to  face  with  a  characteristic  phase 
of  Christian  psychology.  It  is  a  phenomenon  which  is 
part  and  parcel  of  the  recrudescence  of  atavistic 
traits  in  European  society,  a  recrudescence  brought  on 
by  the  general  disintegration  of  the  normal  spirit  of  man 
which  the  over-centralization  of  the  war  and  the 
anarchy  of  the  peace  have  caused.  Central  Europe, 
forced  back  to  practically  a  primitive  mediaeval 
economy  by  the  terms  of  the  peace,  has  reverted 
automatically  to  the  primitive  mediaeval  mentality. 
Once  again  the  Jew,  assigned  to  that  status  by  the 


POLAND,  UKRAINIA,  HUNGARY,  ETC.  243 

*  mediseval  theory  of  life,  is  made  the  scapegoat  of 
the  ills  of  the  people.  Kolchak  or  Denikine,  Kapp 
or  Dmowski,  Stephan  Friedrich  or  Bratianu,  Maxse 
or  Drumont,  Henry  Ford  or  the  Morning  Post,  their 
psychology  is  alike.  Through  them  and  their  followers, 
the  Jews  become  the  ultimate  burnt-offerings  to  the 
delusions  of  the  peace  which  was  made  to  save  de¬ 
mocracy,  to  insure  the  rights  of  minorities,  and  to 
establish  international  comity. 


CHAPTER  XVII 


FROM  VERSAILLES  TO  SAN  REMO — PALESTINE  AND  THE 

NEAR-EASTERN  PROBLEM 

THE  reaction  of  the  Jews  themselves  to  the  situation, 
though  not  simple,  was  not  confused.  Although  in 
some  respects  the  bitter  epigram  of  Zangwill’s 

Hear,  O  Israel,  Jehovah,  the  Lord  thy  God,  is  one, 

But  we,  Jehovah  His  people,  are  dual,  and  so  undone. 

has  become  truer  than  ever,  in  others,  it  has  been  con¬ 
siderably  weakened  by  circumstances.  Under  the 
impact  of  the  central  European  catastrophe  the  prin¬ 
ciple  of  “sauve  qui  peut”  came  naturally  and  auto¬ 
matically  into  operation.  The  Jews  have  their 
emigres ,  no  less  than  the  Russians,  the  Ruthenians, 
the  Austrians,  with  the  emigre  mentality  and  aspirations. 
They  have  their  Socialists  and  Bolshevists  with  the 
inquisitorial  fanaticism  of  a  new  religion  powerful 
at  last,  and  they  have  their  established  behaviour- 
patterns  of  custom,  habit,  and  tradition.  The  inner 
life  of  the  Jewish  peoples  of  central  and  eastern  Europe 
was  determined  by  the  confrontation  of  these  psycholog¬ 
ical  forces,  with  the  victory  inevitably  for  the  deeper- 
lying  and  more  primitive  trends  of  mentality.  The 
objective  of  these  trends  is  secular,  but  the  emotions 
usually  called  religious  had  an  overruling  influence 
in  rendering  it  authoritative.  Circumstances,  more- 

244 


PALESTINE  AND  THE  NEAR  EAST  £45 


over,  endowed  it  with  a  material  purposiveness  which 
in  other  periods  of  persecution  it  had  never  possessed. 
It  is,  of  course,  Zion,  the  traditional  substance  of 
salvation. 

Between  the  protagonists  of  the  Zionist  idea  and 
programme  and  the  abstract  and  doctrinaire  humani- 
tarianism  of  the  Jewish  internationalists  of  the  Bolshe¬ 
vik  or  other  Socialist  sects  there  was  fought  out  con¬ 
comitantly  with  the  tragedies  of  the  Ukraine,  Hungary, 
and  Poland,  a  battle  for  the  .leadership  of  the  Jewish 
community  and  the  control  of  the  Jewish  institutions. 
In  the  Ukraine  and  Russia  the  Socialist  sectaries  ac¬ 
cused  the  Zionists  of  being  tools  of  British  imperialism, 
of  providing  army  corps  to  combat  the  people’s  rights 
in  Egypt  and  Syria  and  India.  During  the  German 
occupation  in  the  Ukraine  they  called  them  “infamous 
friends  of  England.”  When  the  Soviet  government 
reconquered  the  Ukraine  they  accused  them  of  re¬ 
action  and  counter-revolution.  They  denounced  He¬ 
brew  as  the  bulwark  of  Jewish  clericalism  and  they 
did  their  best  to  obtain  complete  control  of  the  com¬ 
munal  institutions  and  the  Jewish  National  Assembly. 
Disastrously  defeated  by  the  Zionists  in  the  elections 
of  1918,  they  withdrew  from  the  Assembly,  and  de¬ 
voted  themselves,  under  the  Bolshevist  dominion — 
which,  instructed  by  them  that  they  represented 
the  Jewish  masses,  had  given  them  place  and  power — 
to  persecuting  the  Zionist  organization  and  breaking 
up  the  Jewish  communities.  They  even  succeeded, 
through  the  intervention  of  the  Ukrainian  communist 
Diamanstein,  who  was  visiting  Moscow,  in  persuading 
the  central  government,  which  had  always  tried  to 
deal  justly  with  the  racial  minorities  in  its  dominions, 


246  ZIONISM  AND  WORLD  POLITICS 


to  undertake  the  complete  repression  of  the  Zionists. 
This  was  prevented  by  a  protest  meeting  in  Moscow. 
Attended  incognito  by  Soviet  commissaries,  it  in¬ 
fluenced  them  to  take  steps  correcting  the  mistake. 

Of  course,  the  feeling  of  the  Jewish  masses  in  Russia 
and  the  Ukraine  against  the  Jewish  communists 
could  not  fail  to  become  intensely  bitter.  In  the 
Zionist  programme  and  the  Zionist  organization  they 
had  found  the  fusion  of  their  past  and  present  hopes 
of  salvation.  It  gave  them  a  foundation  for  self- 
respect  and  a  programme  for  creative  action.  The 
Balfour  Declaration,  which  had  come  to  them  as  a 
promise  of  relief,  had  developed  with  the  growing 
tragedy  of  the  time  into  a  gospel  of  religious  hope. 
More  than  a  million  of  what  remained  of  the  three 
million  disinherited  Jews  of  Russia  and  the  Ukraine 
were,  because  of  their  sufferings,  in  the  state  of  mind 
where  madness  and  religious  inspiration  cannot  be 
distinguished.  In  Russia  great  undertakings  were 
planned  for  Palestine  and  large  sums — in  rubles — 
subscribed.  Enormous  migrations  were  projected. 
Odessa  and  Sebastopol  were  overrun  with  committees 
trying  to  arrange  migration  or  restrain  migration. 
Workmen’s  groups  were  organized  in  thousands. 
Young  men  and  old  sailed  in  fishing  smacks  or  wandered 
on  foot — to  find  themselves  stranded  in  Constan¬ 
tinople  and  other  wayside  cities.  Poland,  Hungary, 
Rumania — by  and  large — were  in  this  respect  echoes 
of  Russia  and  the  Ukraine.  All  classes  of  the  Jewish 
population  exhibited  the  same  dominant  trend.  Even 
in  Germany — where  the  “Germans  of  the  Mosaic 
confession”  who  had  before  the  war  controlled  the 
Jewish  communities  found  themselves  facing  a  general 


PALESTINE  AND  THE  NEAR  EAST  247 

democratic  movement  for  nation-wide  community 
organization  analogous  to  that  in  the  eastward  lands — 
the  unity  of  sentiment  on  Zionism  stood  out  in  con¬ 
trast  to  the  division  on  domestic  problems. 

This  was  still  more  true  in  the  western  lands.  There 
were  many  conflicts  within  the  Jewish  communities, 
accentuated  by  the  war — in  America  over  the  perma¬ 
nence  of  the  American  Jewish  Congress;  in  England 
over  the  responsibility  of  the  Slitadlanic  heads  of  the 
Jewish  population  there.  But  excepting  negligible 
cases  of  “imaginative  nervousness”  or  doctrinal 
repressions,  the  unity  of  sentiment  regarding  the 
Jewish  Homeland  was  extraordinary.  The  Board  of 
Deputies  in  Great  Britain  had  already  in  March,  1918, 
endorsed  the  Balfour  Declaration  and  the  planned 
terms  of  the  Mandate.  During  the  ensuing  year  it 
also  established  with  the  Committee  of  Jewish  Delega¬ 
tions  informally  closer  and  closer  relationships  that 
only  waited  an  annual  meeting  to  be  made  formal. 
Alone  the  Anglo- Jewish  Association  and  the  Alliance 
Israelite  Universelle  still  stood  out  against  the  union, 
their  theological  internationalism  serving  the  same 
practical  purpose  as  the  economic  internationalism 
of  the  Jewish  communists  of  obstructing  united  Jewish 
action  to  save  two  thirds  of  the  Jewish  population 
of  the  world  being  done  to  death. 

The  Committee  of  Jewish  Delegations  carried  on  as 
best  it  could.  It  pressed  matters  left  pending  by  the 
adjournment  of  the  Paris  Conference.  It  studied  and 
reported  on  conditions  that  developed  in  central 
Europe.  It  protested  to  the  public  opinion  of  the 
world  and  interpellated  and  memorialized  govern¬ 
ments.  Its  constituencies  in  America  and  in  western 


248  ZIONISM  AND  WORLD  POLITICS 


Europe  took  similar  action  with  regard  to  their  own 
governments.  And  the  governments  promised  investi¬ 
gation  and  correction — which,  no  doubt,  in  the  course 
of  diplomatic  time  and  according  to  diplomatic  agree¬ 
ments  may  be  effected.  But  all  the  while  from  central 
Europe  the  bitter  cry  of  the  Jews  went  up.  And  they 
suffered  and  endured  only  through  the  hope  of  the 
New  Zion. 

Yet  as  the  months  crept  on,  they  began  to  fear,  as 
we  have  already  noted,  that  the  saving  vision,  which 
had  been  the  essence  of  the  morale  of  Jewry  through 
all  the  long  centuries  of  its  outlawry,  was  about  to  be 
destroyed  at  its  base.  Not  only  the  leaders,  the  whole 
Jewish  people  became  shaken  by  a  bitter  great  dis¬ 
quiet.  Rumours  spread  among  them  in  all  the  lands 
where  they  dwelt,  that  the  Balfour  Declaration  had 
been  only  a  diplomatic  gesture,  and  having  served  its 
purpose,  would  be  abandoned,  like  other  used-up  war 
materials. 

Specifically  the  reasons  were  as  follows: 

War  propaganda,  reenforcing  the  nationalism  of  the 
upper  classes  of  Egypt,  of  Syria,  and  other  of  the  Asiatic 
tributaries  of  the  Turk,  fused  with  war  oppression 
and  administrative  stupidities  in  Egypt  and  India,  to 
bring  into  existence  something  like  a  political  sentiment 
among  the  altogether  unpolitical  and  economically 
primitive  masses  of  those  countries.  This  sentiment 
constituted  a  social  explosive  which  almost  anything 
in  the  way  of  an  error  of  judgment  or  a  failure  in 
tact  might  touch  off.  Arabia  and  Irak,  which  had  been 
under  the  Turk  an  insulating  vacuum  between  the  two 
centres,  became,  under  the  contagion  of  Syrian  na¬ 
tionalism  and  British  propaganda,  a  fairly  sensitive 


PALESTINE  AND  THE  NEAR  EAST  249 


conducting  surface.  In  consequence  the  Arab  world, 
with  its  very  contrasting  social  classes  and  levels 
of  culture,  was  on  the  point  of  attaining  a  unity  of 
feeling — secular,  this  time — which  it  had  not  been 
possessed  by  since  the  days  of  the  great  Arab  Khalifs. 
The  ideational  channels  of  this  feeling  and  of  the 
programme  of  action  to  which  it  was  to  supply  the 
force  ran  in  one  direction  to  the  imperialistic  extremes 
of  pan-Arabism,  in  other,  to  the  nationalist  harmonics 
of  the  Wilsonian  programme  and  the  Balfour  Declara¬ 
tion.  The  latter  had  in  a  very  short  time  after  its 
promulgation  become  a  sort  of  gospel  of  reconstruction 
among  the  masses  of  the  Allies.  Article  XII  of  the 
Fourteen  Points  stated: 

The  Turkish  portions  of  the  present  Ottoman  Empire 
should  be  assured  a  secure  sovereignty,  but  the  other  na¬ 
tionalities  which  are  now  under  Turkish  rule  should  be 
assured  an  undoubted  security  of  life  and  absolutely  un¬ 
molested  opportunity  for  autonomous  development,  and  the 
Dardanelles  should  be  permanently  opened  as  a  free  passage 
to  the  ships  and  commerce  of  all  nations  under  international 
guarantees. 

Until  discussions  actually  began  in  Paris  this  para¬ 
graph  represented  to  the  minds  of  all  but  the  most  ex¬ 
tremist  of  Syrian  and  Arab  leaders  the  realistic  limits 
of  what  they  might  hope  to  attain.  They  were  ready 
to  acquiesce  in  it.  To  the  rather  primitive  peoples — 
the  Armenians  may,  perhaps,  be  excepted — whose  self- 
chosen  representatives  they  were,  even  these  conditions 
were  of  remote  and  somewhat  speculative  importance. 
But  as  it  began  to  be  more  and  more  apparent  that  the 
official  American  and  popular  liberal  European  terms 


250  ZIONISM  AND  WORLD  POLITICS 


of  settlement  were  being  entirely  disregarded  by  the 
Peace  Conference,  that  the  settlement  had  become  the 
usual  diplomat’s  game  of  grab,  and  that  the  presenta¬ 
tion  of  the  Turkish  treaty  was  destined  to  indefinite 
delay,  Turks  and  Arabs  began  a  play  for  their  own 
hands. 

For  the  Turks  the  play  was  desperate.  They  had 
been  refused  all  consideration  by  the  Council  of  Four 
in  terms  as  unmistakable  as  they  were  stinging.  Their 
state,  even  such  as  it  had  been,  was  completely  ruined, 
and  their  pre-war  pan-Turanianism  was  bankrupt. 
There  remained  a  nationalist  eastward  propaganda 
among  the  more  or  less  Turanian  stocks  from  Anatolia 
to  the  Carpathians,  and  a  religious  general  propaganda 
among  the  Moslem  faithful.  Pan-Turanianism  and  pan- 
Moslemism  were  preached  at  one  and  the  same  time. 
The  nationalist  leader,  Mustapha  Kjamil  Pasha,  produced 
a  reconciling  formula  for  these  essentially  irreconcilable 
doctrines.  “I  preach,”  he  declared,  “ Islam  as  a  race.” 
At  the  same  time  he  made  use  of  Islam  to  foment  and 
increase  the  unrest  in  Moslem  India,  Egypt,  and  Syria. 
By  the  Moslems  of  India,  whose  nationalist  preoccupa¬ 
tions  would  be  well  served  by  such  an  occasion,  the 
Turkish  peace  and  the  integrity  of  the  Turkish  Empire 
was  converted  into  a  religious  question  of  the  Khalifate. 
In  Egypt  and  Syria  the  conception  of  the  unity  of  the 
Moslem  world  was  made  the  basis  of  a  bitter  anti- 
European  propaganda. 

This  was  possible  because  the  Arabic  world  was  itself 
insecure  in  status  and  confused  in  counsel.  To  the 
contagion  which  it  was  undergoing  at  the  hands  of  the 
Turks  were  added  the  effects  of  the  vacillating  policy 
of  the  English  and  the  logical  imperialism  of  the  French. 


PALESTINE  AND  THE  NEAR  EAST  251 


Between  these  two  countries  a  duel  went  on  of  which 
the  purpose  was,  so  far  as  the  French  were  concerned, 
to  squeeze  the  maximum  of  advantage  out  of  the 
Sykes-Picot  Treaty;  so  far  as  the  English  were  concerned 
to  assuage  the  excitement  in  Egypt  and  in  India,  to 
keep  their  words  to  the  Arabs  and  the  Jews,  and  to 
make  sure  of  the  possession  of  the  Mesopotamian 
oil  fields  and  the  gates  to  India.  Many  British  officials, 
particularly  the  political  and  ethnographic  experts, 
felt  that  this  could  be  accomplished  only  with  great 
difficulty,  and  that  the  Jews  were  the  essential  part 
of  any  plan  not  merely  of  conciliation  but  of  develop¬ 
ment  of  the  Far  East.  So,  as  we  have  seen,  Sir  Mark 
Sykes  believed,  dwelling  on  the  concept  of  a  confedera¬ 
tion  of  Jews,  Arabs,  and  Armenians  in  a  great  league 
of  Syria  and  Asia  Minor.  In  the  opinion  of  Col.  T.  E. 
Lawrence,  who  had  been  the  chief  British  agent  in 
Arabia  and  Feisal’s  right  hand  in  all  the  activities 
of  the  Hedjaz  from  the  first  contact  to  the  conference 
in  Paris,  Zionism  was  “the  only  practical  means  of 
setting  the  new  Semitic  near  east  in  order  in  our  own 
days.”  He  urged  that  the  Jews  become  Palestinians 
as  quickly  as  possible  and  bring  into  play  in  the  life 
of  Asia  Minor  that  aspect  of  their  temperament 
which,  because  of  their  long  European  discipline,  is 
complementary  to  that  of  the  Arab.  Major  Ormsby- 
Gore,  the  first  liaison  officer  between  the  Zionist 
Administrative  Commission  and  the  military  govern¬ 
ment  in  Palestine,  now  a  member  of  Parliament,  urged 
the  necessity  of  Jewish  initiative  in  the  revival  of 
Arabic  culture  as  a  foremost  device  in  relieving  the 
long  strain  due  to  political  disturbances  in  the  Arabian 
world.  General  Smuts  held  a  similar  opinion. 


252  ZIONISM  AND  WORLD  POLITICS 

The  military,  on  the  other  hand,  felt  that  all  the 
British  purposes  could  not  be  accomplished  at  the  same 
time  and  that  for  the  good  of  the  empire  one  or  another 
of  them  would  have  to  be  dropped.  They  were  for 
dropping  the  pledge  to  the  Jews.  Under  that  pledge, 
the  strategic  problem  in  Asia  Minor  and  in  Egypt 
became  complicated.  Palestine  became  a  sort  of 
buffer  state  between  the  nationalism  of  Egypt  and 
the  nationalism  of  Arabia  that,  from  the  military 
point  of  view,  could  not  be  successfully  held.  A 
much  easier  and  simpler  thing  to  hold  would  be  a  united 
Asia  Minor,  a  Pan- Arabia,  with  no  ethnic  or  religious 
problems  superadded  to  those  already  existing.  Mili¬ 
tary  experience  had  already  proved  this.  While 
all  Asia  Minor  was  under  Allenby,  there  had  been  no 
exceptional  police  difficulties  or  any  other  type  of 
trouble.  The  administration  of  Syria  and  Trans- 
jordania  by  the  French  and  Arab  officials  had  gone  on 
smoothly  and  easily  enough.  But  then  Paris  demanded 
and  London  ordered,  in  fulfilment  of  the  Sykes-Picot 
Treaty,  the  withdrawal  of  the  British  troops  to  the 
boundaries  set  by  the  treaty.  The  withdrawal  was 
executed — under  the  protest  of  both  Allenby  and  Bols, 
and  border  troubles  immediately  began. 

Thinking  thus  in  strategic  and  imperialistic  terms, 
and  animated  perhaps  by  the  vision  of  a  continuous 
British  protectorate,  from  the  Mediterranean  to 
India,  the  military  administration,  backed  by  the 
missionary  interest,  took  advantage  of  the  rules 
imposed  by  the  Hague  conventions  regarding  the 
government  of  occupied  enemy  territory  to  sabotage 
the  Balfour  Declaration  and  to  establish  their  own 
programme  as  a  fait  accompli.  Anti-Semitism  among 


PALESTINE  AND  THE  NEAR  EAST  253 


high  officials  had  not  a  little  to  do  with  the  matter; 
ignorance,  stupidity,  and  incompetence  among  their 
subordinates  not  a  little.  That  they  were  not  officially 
made  aware  of  the  Balfour  Declaration  helped.  That, 
as  Colonel  Lawrence  pointed  out  to  Doctor  Weizmann, 
Episcopal  dioceses  with  missionary  interests  organized 
anti- Jewish  propaganda,  helped.  And  the  almost 
parallel  stupidity,  ignorance,  and  incompetence  of  the 
Palestinian  Jews,  and  their  unparalleled  disunion,  their 
sectarian,  nationalate,  linguistic,  and  other  quarrels, 
helped.  The  Occupied  Enemy  Territory  Administra¬ 
tion  was  crowded  with  ex-Turkish  officials  and  Syrian 
Christians  who  were  used  and  who  made  spontaneous 
use  of  their  positions  in  political  intrigue  and  opposition 
to  Zionism.  Military  officers  known  to  be  anti- Jewish 
were  appointed  to  what  would  become  permanent 
posts.  The  use  of  Hebrew  on  official  documents  was 
sabotaged.  Palestine  became  the  gathering  place  for 
Egyptian  and  Syrian  agitators  and  the  propaganda 
field  of  a  subsidized  press.  The  Arab  landlord  and 
the  Arab  money-lender  were  automatically  adopting 
the  tactics  of  the  Polish  and  Hungarian  and  Rumanian 
upper  classes  in  the  attempt  to  retain  their  privileged 
stranglehold  upon  the  peasantry.  Meanwhile,  officers 
of  administration  were  making  promises  of  amendment 
and  correction  which  were  never  carried  out,  while  in 
Europe,  Curzon,  as  Secretary  of  State  for  Foreign 
Affairs,  was  solemnly  reaffirming  the  Balfour  Declara¬ 
tion. 

The  position  of  the  Zionist  Administrative  Commis¬ 
sion  under  these  circumstances  may  be  imagined. 
Its  personnel  was  constantly  changing,  and  in  its 
permanent  membership  there  was  no  one  of  character, 


254  ZIONISM  AND  WORLD  POLITICS 


competency,  and  distinction  great  enough  to  command 
the  respect  of  the  military  administration.  In  the 
course  of  little  more  than  a  year  it  gathered  into 
its  offices  a  body  of  Palestinian  experts-by-book  and 
others  who  were  no  better  than  the  officials  of  the  ad¬ 
ministration.  It  tried  hard  to  introduce — particularly 
at  the  beginning,  when  Americans  were  unofficially 
in  the  Commission — system  and  efficiency  into  the 
affairs  of  the  Palestinian  communities,  but  it  was 
neither  skilled  nor  wise  enough  to  find  a  device  that 
might  overcome  the  babel  of  minute  sectarian,  geo¬ 
graphical,  linguistic,  economic,  social,  and  political 
groupings  from  which  the  Jewish  population  of  Palestine 
suffers,  and  into  which  it  had  again  disintegrated  with 
the  relaxation  of  the  unity  of  the  war.  The  Commis¬ 
sion  was  required  to  meet  problems  of  relief,  education, 
health,  and  political  organization,  but  its  departments 
were  organized  according  to  a  pedantic  scheme  rather 
than  according  to  the  realities  it  was  called  upon  to 
face.  Such  realities  were  the  Arabs  with  whom  it 
should  have  sought  a  rapprochement,  the  rising  cost 
of  living  and  the  increasing  emigration  of  Jews  from 
Palestine.  But  for  this  it  possessed  neither  the 
inward  equipment  nor  the  outward  prestige.  It 
needed  capacity,  men,  and  money,  and  the  last  was  piti¬ 
fully  inadequate  even  for  such  powers  and  abilities 
as  it  possessed.  Palestinian  Jewry  at  the  same  time 
were  deeply  engrossed  in  the  very  pleasing  business  of 
getting  all  they  could  out  of  the  situation,  or  in  speculat¬ 
ing  profoundly  and  arguing  loudly  regarding  political 
forms  and  economic  programmes,  while  the  concrete 
task  of  work  and  self-maintenance  from  day  to  day 
were  left  to  the  agencies  of  relief  or  went  by  default. 


PALESTINE  AND  THE  NEAR  EAST  255 


Even  the  American  Zionist  Medical  Unit — in  its 
relation  to  its  setting  a  paragon  of  disciplined  efficiency 
— was  infused  with  the  quarrelsome  contagion.  It 
also  found  itself  undergoing,  in  addition  to  the  op¬ 
position  of  the  old-fashioned  Palestinian  physicians 
and  the  jurisdictional  disputes  with  the  Commission, 
internal  dissensions.  Its  work,  indeed,  was  the  most 
hopeful,  and  a  function  of  its  entire  independence  from 
the  Commission.  It  created  what  is  in  practice  a 
national  health  service,  with  hospitals  both  fixed 
and  mobile,  and  medical  help  for  all  the  inhabitants 
of  the  land,  without  distinction  of  race  or  creed.  An¬ 
other  hopeful  indication  was  the  creation  of  the  Pro- 
Jerusalem  Society,  made  up  of  Jews  and  Arabs,  with 
the  purpose  of  cleaning  up,  preserving,  and  beautifying 
old  Jerusalem  and  building  a  decent  new  Jerusalem. 
Still  another  was  the  agitation  over  the  franchise  for 
women  precipitated  by  the  orthodox  rabbis,  whose 
opinion  of  women  and  their  rights  corresponded  with 
the  orthodox  opinion  of  all  sects  at  all  times.  This 
quarrel — which  through  the  courageous  action  of  the 
Commission  delayed  the  election  of  “the  constituent 
assembly”  of  Palestinian  Jewry  until  it  was  settled — 
was  finally  settled  in  favour  of  the  women.1  Something 
got  done  also  to  improve  the  educational  system  and 
the  condition  of  the  teachers.  The  problem  of  main¬ 
tenance  was  faced,  if  not  met.  Consumers’  cooperatives 
were  first  encouraged  and  then  mishandled.  Kwuzoth 
or  cooperative  workmen’s  colonies  were  outfitted. 
Irrigation  and  water-power  surveys  were  planned,  and 

xThe  ‘ ‘Const itutent  Assembly”  was  chosen  on  the  basis  of  a  secret, 
direct  ballot  and  proportional  representation.  The  workmen’s  organizations 
and  the  Sephardic  communities  made  the  best  runs,  the  others  being  too 
broken  by  schisms  and  dissensions  or  being  boycotted  by  the  electors. 


256  ZIONISM  AND  WORLD  POLITICS 


within  the  straitened  financial  limits  undertaken — 
the  engineer  in  charge  being  Pincus  Ruthenberg,  one 
of  the  few  really  forceful  personalities  who  had  reached 
Palestine. 

But  confusion  and  inefficiency  within  and  political 
obstruction  and  anxiety  without  were  on  the  whole  too 
great  handicaps.  Mr.  Justice  Brandeis’s  visit  to 
Palestine  in  the  summer  of  1919  relieved  the  situation 
a  little.  Through  his  influence  one  of  the  chief  sabotteurs 
of  the  Balfour  Declaration  was  removed,  and  a  politi¬ 
cally  much  wiser  and  administratively  more  competent 
man  was  sent  in  his  place.  One  man,  however,  work¬ 
ing  in  transit  could  do  little  to  break  the  bureaucratic 
web  of  intrigue  that  had  somehow  gotten  stretched 
from  the  meanest  Arab  money-lender  in  .Nablus  to  the 
highest  English  administrative  officer  in  Cairo.  The 
crisis  in  the  duel  of  empire  developed  with  the  approach 
of  the  time  for  the  promulgation  of  the  Turkish  treaty 
of  peace.  Signs  were  not  lacking  that  a  coup  was  being 
prepared  not  without  analogies  to  the  South  African 
coup  which  was  aborted  by  the  Jameson  raid.  The 
Arab  Club  at  Damascus — the  heir  of  the  nationalist 
group  of  the  Great  War — was  encouraged  to  make 
bolder  and  bolder  demands.  It  was  anti-French — 
as  are  the  vast  majority  of  Syrians — and  its  titular 
head  was  Feisal.  Its  resources  came  from  the  Arab 
administration  and  this  functioned  on  subsidies  from 
the  British  and  French  governments.  In  cases  of 
error,  the  more  cautious,  substantial,  and  propertied 
Nationalist  Party  served  to  neutralize  the  attitude 
of  the  firebrands,  but  in  an  emergency  it  would  not 
fail  to  act  with  the  Arab  Club.  The  demands  of  this 
club  took  the  form  of  the  resurrection  on  an  imperial 


PALESTINE  AND  THE  NEAR  EAST  257 


scale  of  the  proposals  made  in  the  early  days  of  the 
war  by  the  Arab  National  Committee  which  had  been 
betrayed  to  the  Turks  and  by  them  crushed.  There 
was  to  be  an  imperial  Arab  state,  under  British  pro¬ 
tection,  coextensive  with  Asia  Minor.  This  state 
should  be  a  fait  accompli  that  the  unsuspecting  politi¬ 
cians  in  Downing  Street  and  the  negotiators  in  San 
Remo  should,  willy-nilly,  have  to  face  and  acknowledge. 
So,  in  March,  1920,  a  Syrian  Congress  coming  together 
any  which  way  proclaimed  Feisal  king  of  Syria  and 
Palestine  and  his  brother  Abdullah  king  of  Mesopo¬ 
tamia.  At  the  same  time  the  Egyptian  legislative 
assembly  met  and  proclaimed  the  independence  cf 
Egypt  and  the  Sudan.  The  understandings  Feisal 
declared  he  had  with  Doctor  Weizmann,  his  written 
statements  and  public  proclamations  of  endorsement 
of  and  cooperation  with  Zionism,  the  pledge  made  by 
the  British  Government  through  the  Balfour  Declara¬ 
tion,  these  were  to  be  redeemed  by  giving  Feisal  a  man¬ 
date  for  Palestine  and  guaranteeing  Jewish  rights 
therein  by  means  of  a  minority  treaty  of  the  type  the 
Jews  had  themselves  promulgated  for  themselves 
and  the  other  minorities  of  central  and  eastern  Europe. 

How  this  brilliant  and  sardonic  conception  would 
have  fared  among  the  politicians  had  the  European 
entanglements  of  the  Entente  and  the  political  com¬ 
plications  in  India  not  been  in  the  way,  may  be  specu¬ 
lated  upon.  The  Moslems  of  India  were  demanding 
an  integral  Turkey  for  the  sake — so  they  said — of 
the  Khalifate.  They  repudiated  the  Emir  at  Mecca 
and  all  his  works.  The  Tripolitan  Arabs  protested 
Feisal,  and  the  Lebanon  Committee — these  represented 
the  French  connection — demanded  that  he  evacuate 


258  ZIONISM  AND  WORLD  POLITICS 


Syria.  The  French — who  seem  in  addition  to  have 
mobilized  the  Catholic  interest  (which  acquired  a 
sudden  anxiety  about  the  Holy  Places  and  reversed 
itself  on  Zionism)  and  to  have  encouraged  the  Arab 
nationalists  outside  of  their  piece  of  Syria — demanded 
the  letter  and  the  spirit  of  the  Sykes-Picot  Treaty. 

In  Arabia  and  in  Palestine  the  crowning  of  Feisal 
was  accompanied  by  propaganda  both  spoken  and 
printed.  The  number  of  foreign  agitators  in  Palestine 
multiplied.  The  city  populations,  especially  that  of 
Jerusalem,  were  particularly  inflamed.  Tension  in¬ 
creased.  The  British  authorities  were  warned  by 
members  of  the  Zionist  Commission  and  by  others 
that  there  was  danger  of  bloodshed.  They  ordered 
the  population  to  give  up  its  arms  but  they  enforced 
the  order  against  the  Jews  and  not  against  the  Arabs. 
They  were  asked  to  bring  in  soldiers  to  do  the  policing, 
and  they  refused  that.  One  anti-Zionist  demonstra¬ 
tion  succeeded  another.  Appeals  to  the  Arabs  by 
the  Va’ad  Hazmani — a  sort  of  provisional  council  of 
the  Jewish  community — for  peace  and  cooperation 
failed  of  attention  even.  Under  the  circumstances 
Vladimir  Jabotinsky  and  Pincus  Ruthenberg  pro¬ 
ceeded,  in  violation  of  the  governor’s  prohibition,  to 
organize  a  defense  brigade.  The  organization  was  not 
complete  or  effective  enough  to  prevent  the  culminating 
riot  and  bloodshed  during  the  Passover  of  1920.  It 
had  been  preceded  by  a  demand — on  the  threat  of  a 
massacre  of  the  Jews — that  the  Administration  suppress 
the  Zionist  Commission,  expel  the  leaders,  and  dis¬ 
solve  the  Jewish  battalion.  The  rumour  spread  that 
the  local  administration  had  conceded  this  demand, 
but  that  General  Allenby  had  vetoed  it.  A  couple 


PALESTINE  AND  THE  NEAR  EAST  259 


of  days  later  came  the  riot,  with  all  the  casualties  on 
the  side  of  the  unarmed  Jews.  It  lasted  three  days 
and  was  accompanied  with  cheers  for  Feisal  and  the 
exhibition  of  his  portrait.  On  the  third  day  the  ad¬ 
ministration  brought  in  the  soldiers  and  restored 
order  easily  enough.  Later,  Jabotinsky  and  members 
of  the  Defense  Company  were  arrested  for  breaking 
the  rules  against  carrying  arms,  and  other  similar 
high  crimes  and  misdemeanours,  and  Jabotinsky  was 
sentenced  to  fifteen  years’  imprisonment,  the  same 
sentence  as  was  passed  upon  two  Arabs  convicted  of 
rape.  The  news  came  on  Saturday  while  most  of  the 
Jews  were  at  prayer  in  the  synagogue.  Some  indication 
of  the  total  effect  of  the  situation  upon  their  morale  may 
be  found  in  the  fact  that,  led  by  the  rabbis,  the  masses 
signed  then  and  there  a  petition  to  the  governor  claiming 
equal  guilt  with  Jabotinsky  for  the  defense  organization 
and  demanding  equal  punishment.  Jews,  it  will  be  re¬ 
membered,  are  prohibited  by  their  religion  from  writing 
on  the  Sabbath. 

Among  the  country  people  the  outrages  brought 
similar  protests.  To  Sir  Herbert  Samuel,  who  had 
been  sent  ostensibly  as  economic  and  financial  adviser  to 
the  military  administration,  twelve  Sheikhs  of  Druses 
and  Maronites  protested  the  pogrom.  Later,  eighty- 
two  villages,  describing  themselves  as  70  per  cent,  of  the 
Palestinian  population  and  90  per  cent,  of  the  peasant 
landholders,  denounced  the  anti-Zionist  demonstration 
and  declared  their  hope  for  a  great  Jewish  settlement 
under  British  mandate  which  would  liberate  them  from 
the  oppression  of  the  Effendi  and  the  money-lender. 

In  England  and  in  the  United  States  the  mixture  of 
news  and  rumours  all  of  which  seemed  to  point  to  an 


260  ZIONISM  AND  WORLD  POLITICS 


attempt  at  nullifying  the  Balfour  Declaration  made  a 
very  painful  impression.  Its  effect  upon  the  Jews 
has  already  been  indicated,  but  its  effect  upon  the 
non-Jewish  citizens  of  England  particularly,  is  most 
significant.  One  paper  after  another,  from  the  Times 
to  the  smallest  provincial  journal,  demanded  that 
the  word  given  the  Jewish  people  should  not  be  broken. 
Questions  were  asked  Parliament,  again  and  again,  on 
all  the  elements  in  the  situation.  There  was  formed  a 
parliamentary  committee  to  watch  over  Palestine 
affairs,  with  Lord  Robert  Cecil  as  chairman  and  Major 
Ormsby-Gore  as  secretary.  Petitions  were  circulated 
and  signed  by  members  of  the  House  of  Lords,  the 
Commons,  the  journalists,  writers,  labour  leaders, 
churchmen,  societies,  demanding  the  validation  of  the 
Balfour  Declaration  and  a  British  mandate  for  Pales¬ 
tine.  These  petitions  were  sent  to  the  Peace  Con¬ 
ference  which  at  last  was  meeting  at  San  Remo. 

The  workingmen  of  Great  Britain  sent  then  the 
following  resolution  addressed  to  Mr.  Lloyd  George: 

At  meetings  held  in  London  this  week  the  Parliamentary 
Labour  Party,  the  Executive  Committee  of  the  Labour 
Party,  and  the  Parliamentary  Committee  of  the  Trades 
Union  Congress  have  adopted  resolutions  reminding  the 
British  Government  of  the  Declaration  made  on  November 
2nd,  1917,  that  the  Government  would  endeavour  to  facili¬ 
tate  the  establishment  of  a  Jewish  National  Home  in  Pales¬ 
tine,  a  declaration  that  was  in  harmony  with  the  declared 
war  aims  of  the  British  Labour  Movement,  and  which  was 
cordially  welcomed  by  all  sections  of  the  British  people, 
and  was  reaffirmed  by  Earl  Curzon  on  November  2nd,  1919. 
The  National  Labour  organizations  indicated  now  urge  upon 
his  Majesty’s  Government  the  necessity  of  redeeming  this 
pledge  by  the  acceptance  of  a  mandate  under  the  League 


PALESTINE  AND  THE  NEAR  EAST  261 


of  Nations  for  the  administration  of  Palestine  with  a  view 
to  its  being  reconstituted  the  National  Home  of  the  Jewish 
people.  The  National  Committees  desire  to  associate  them¬ 
selves  with  the  many  similar  representations  being  made  to 
the  Government  urging  the  settlement  of  this  question 
with  the  utmost  despatch,  both  in  the  interests  of  Palestine 
itself  as  well  as  in  the  interests  of  the  Jewish  people. 

J.  R.  Clynes  (Acting  Chairman 
Parliamentary  Labour  Party). 

H.  S.  Lindsay  (Secretary). 

W.  H.  Hutchinson  (Chairman 
Labour  Party  Executive). 

Arthur  Henderson  (Secretary 
Labour  Party  Executive). 

J.  H.  Thomas  (Chairman  Trades 
Union  Congress). 

C.  W.  Bowerman  (Secretary 
Trades  Union  Congress). 

The  Jews  of  the  world  choked  the  wires  with  mes¬ 
sages.  Even  the  League  of  British  Jews  and  the  Con¬ 
joint  Foreign  Committee  took  steps  to  help  insure  the 
redeeming  of  the  pledge  to  the  Jewish  people.  From 
the  President  and  from  other  members  of  his  adminis¬ 
tration  in  America  came  explicit  cables  regarding  the 
position  of  America  on  the  terms  of  the  Turkish  treaty. 
Against  the  great  wave  of  public  sentiment  the  im¬ 
perialists  could  not  hope  to  prevail.  Feisal  was  told, 
when,  after  repeated  invitations  he  had  stated  his 
case,  that  the  project — not  his  own — for  an  integral 
independent  Syria  and  Palestine  was  inadmissible. 
The  French  took  their  mandate  over  Syria,  and  England 
accepted  that  over  Palestine  and  took  that  over  Meso¬ 
potamia.  Constantinople  was  left  to  the  Turk.  On 
April  25,  1920,  the  Supreme  Council  of  the  Allied 
Peace  Conference  decided  to  incorporate  the  Balfour 


262  ZIONISM  AND  WORLD  POLITICS 


Declaration  into  the  Turkish  treaty.  A  little  more 
than  a  month  later.  Sir  Herbert  Samuel,  distinguished 
British  public  servant,  devout  Jew,  Zionist,  official 
philosophic  exponent  of  British  liberalism1  was  ap¬ 
pointed  High  Commissioner  for  Palestine. 

But  the  action  was  not  a  clean  action  for  the  treaty 
was  written  in  terms  of  the  tripartite  agreement  between 
England,  France,  and  Italy.  That  meant  that  there 
was  extended  into  the  future  at  least  the  nefarious  con¬ 
sequences  of  the  secret  Sykes-Picot  Treaty.  And  that 
meant  essential  injustice  to  both  the  Jewish  homeland 
and  to  Feisal.  Morally  it  involved  in  many  respects 
a  violation  of  the  pledges  made  to  both.  Nevertheless, 
the  principal  pledges  were  kept. 

1  Cf.  Herbert  Samuel :  “Liberalism:  Its  Principles  and  Proposals.”  London, 
1903. 


CHAPTER  XVIII 


SAN  REMO:  THE  END  OF  AN  EPOCH 

THE  Treaty  of  San  Remo  begins  to  redeem  what 
the  Balfour  Declaration  pledged.  It  restores  the 
Jewish  people  to  an  equal  status  with  the  other  peoples 
of  the  world.  It  designs  to  give  them  back  by  public 
covenant  the  corporate  citizenship  under  the  law 
of  nations  which  imperial  edict  took  from  them  in  Rome 
in  the  339th  year  of  the  Christian  era.  It  is  a  momen¬ 
tous  covenant,  momentous  for  the  Jews,  momentous 
for  the  world.  It  marks,  in  more  ways  than  one,  the 
ending  of  an  epoch  in  the  history  of  mankind  in  Chris¬ 
tian  Europe.  This  is  an  epoch  whose  character  was 
determined  by  the  closing  of  the  schools  and  the  sur¬ 
render  of  education  to  the  control  of  the  fathers  of  the 
church.  What  it  meant  for  the  happiness  and  freedom 
of  mankind,  how  it  shut  in  the  mind  and  degraded 
the  body  and  divided  the  spirit  has  already  been 
suggested;1  it  may  be  read  in  any  history  of  Europe 
dealing  with  the  evolution  of  free  institutions  and  the 
liberation  of  the  masses  of  men  from  their  oppressors.2 
The  critical  step  in  this  liberation  was  the  reviving 
of  the  freedom  of  thought.  From  this  everything 

xCf.  Supra  pp.  21-25. 

2Cf.  Lecky:  “The  Rise  and  Influence  of  Rationalism  in  Europe”; 
White:  “History  of  the  Warfare  of  Science  with  Theology”;  Gibbon:  “The 
Decline  and  Fall  of  Rome”;  Taylor:  “The  Mediaeval  Mind”;  Schapiro: 
“European  and  Contemporary  History”;  Bury:  “The  History  of  the  Free¬ 
dom  of  Thought.” 


264  ZIONISM  AND  WORLD  POLITICS 


else  followed — the  shattering  of  the  walls  of  the  world 
through  the  slow  and  painful  establishment  of  the 
heliocentric  astronomical  system  in  the  commonsense 
of  mankind;  the  development  of  commerce;  the  physical 
enlargement  of  the  stage  of  human  enterprise  and  im¬ 
aginative  adventure  by  the  voyages  of  Columbus;  the 
overthrow  of  the  tyranny  over  conscience  by  the 
Reformation;  the  very,  very  slow  recession  of  obedience 
to  authority  and  the  credulity  of  religion  before  the 
independence  and  experimentalism  of  science;  the 
secularization  of  industry  and  politics  until  religious 
imperialism  gives  way  to  religious  nationalism,  and 
religious  nationalism  slowly  disintegrates  under  the 
contacts  with  science,  and  with  the  art  and  industry 
which  are  the  children  of  science,  so  that,  in  theory 
at  least,  Church  and  State  become  completely  separated, 
and  the  right  of  citizenship  is  finally  disentangled  al¬ 
together  from  the  accident  of  membership  in  a  particu¬ 
lar  religious  confession. 

Indeed,  under  the  impact  of  thought  set  free,  Chris- 
tianism  itself  changes  its  character.  It  becomes  less 
and  less  a  rigid  system  of  unchanging  dogmas  sustained 
by  force  as  the  opinion  of  mankind  in  Europe.  It 
becomes  more  and  more  a  sentiment  of  humane  piety, 
a  loyalty  to  the  sources  and  the  fellowships  of  our 
being,  seeking  salvation  in  works  rather  than  in  faith, 
and  aiming  at  justice  rather  than  charity.  The  in¬ 
ternational  image  of  this  sentiment  is  the  Christ  of 
“higher  criticism,”  cleared  by  the  application  of 
scientific  and  historical  method  from  the  mummified 
encasements  of  the  churches  and  their  theologies, 
and  stepping  out  of  the  historian’s  reconstruction 
of  the  gospels  under  a  new  glory,  in  what  is  in  very 


SAN  REMO:  THE  END  OF  AN  EPOCH  265 


truth  a  second  advent — an  old  symbol  renovated  by 
the  new  time,  crying  abroad  4 ‘the  fatherhood  of  God 
and  the  brotherhood  of  man.”  The  lands  where  this 
Christ  has  appeared  and  been  acknowledged  are 
lands  where  the  Church  itself  has  become  secularized 
and  “true”  religion  has  become  identified  with  social 
service.1  They  are  lands  also  in  which  both  political 
democracy  and  industrial  economy  have  made  exten¬ 
sive  gains,  in  which  the  workingmen  are  self-conscious, 
organized,  and  socially  active;  in  which  literacy  is  high 
and  clericalism  negligible.  They  are  modern  lands, 
in  the  best  sense  of  that  term,  and  they  are  lands  in 
which  the  Jew  is  at  least  formally  and  legally  secure 
and  free.  For  the  freedom  and  security  of  the  Jew,  it 
cannot  be  too  often  reiterated,  has  always  been  in 
Christian  Europe,  the  barometer  of  the  civilization, 
the  culture,  the  prosperity,  the  democracy  of  the 
countries  of  his  sojourn.  It  has  always  been  a  function 
of  the  freedom  of  thought.  It  has  always  been  as¬ 
sociated  with  the  causes  of  all  the  oppressed  or  enslaved 
portions  of  the  populations  of  Europe.  Lecky  writes: 

The  persecution  of  the  Jewish  race  dates  from  the  very 
earliest  period  in  which  Christianity  obtained  the  direction 
of  the  civil  power;  and  although  it  varied  greatly  in  its 
character  and  its  intensity,  it  can  scarcely  be  said  to  have 
definitely  ceased  till  the  French  revolution.  Alexander  II, 
and  three  or  four  other  Popes,  made  noble  efforts  to  arrest 
it;  and  more  than  once  interfered  with  great  courage,  as  well 
as  great  humanity,  to  censure  the  massacres;  but  the  priests 
were  usually  unwearied  in  inciting  the  passions  of  the  people, 
and  hatred  of  the  Jew  was  for  many  centuries  a  faithful 

1  Cf.  F.  G.  Peabody:  “Jesus  Christ  and  the  Social  Question.”  Harry  F. 
Ward:  “The  Social  Creed  of  the  Churches”;  “Social  Evangelism”;  “The 
New  Social  Order”;  and  many  others. 


266  ZIONISM  AND  WORLD  POLITICS 


index  of  the  piety  of  the  Christians.  Massacred  by  the 
thousands  during  the  enthusiasm  of  the  Crusades  and  the 
War  of  the  Shepherds,  the  Jews  found  every  ecclesiastical 
revival,  and  the  accession  of  every  sovereign  of  more  than 
usual  devotion,  occasions  for  fresh  legislative  restrictions. 
Theodosious,  St.  Lewis,  and  Isabella  the  Catholic — who  were 
probably  the  three  most  devout  sovereigns  before  the  Ref¬ 
ormation — the  Council  of  the  Lateran,  which  led  the  religi¬ 
ous  revival  of  the  thirteenth  century,  Paul  IV  who  led  that 
of  the  sixteenth  century,  and  above  all  the  religious  orders 
were  among  their  most  ardent  persecutors.  Everything  was 
done  to  separate  them  from  their  fellowmen,  to  mark  them 
out  as  objects  of  undying  hatred,  and  to  stifle  all  com¬ 
passion  for  their  sufferings.  They  were  compelled  to  wear 
a  peculiar  dress  and  to  live  in  a  separate  quarter.  A 
Christian  might  not  enter  into  any  partnership  with  them; 
he  might  not  eat  with  them;  he  might  not  use  the  same  bath; 
he  might  not  employ  them  as  physicians,  he  might  not  even 
purchase  their  drugs.  Intermarriage  with  them  was  deemed 
a  horrible  pollution,  and  in  the  time  of  St.  Lewis  any  Chris¬ 
tian  who  had  chosen  a  Jewess  for  his  mistress  was  burnt  alive. 
Even  in  their  executions  they  were  separated  from  other 
criminals,  and  till  the  fourteenth  century,  they  were  hung 
between  two  dogs,  and  with  the  head  downward.  According 
to  St.  Thomas  Aquinas,  all  they  possessed,  being  derived 
from  the  practice  of  usury,  might  be  justly  confiscated, 
and  if  they  were  ever  permitted  to  pursue  that  practice 
unmolested,  it  was  only  because  they  were  already  so  hope¬ 
lessly  damned  that  no  crime  could  aggravate  their  condition. 

Certainly  the  heroism  of  the  defenders  of  every  other 
creed  fades  into  insignificance  before  this  martyr  people, 
who  for  thirteen  centuries  confronted  all  the  evils  that 
the  fiercest  fanaticism  could  devise,  enduring  obloquy  and 
spoliation  and  the  violation  of  the  dearest  ties,  and  the 
infliction  of  the  most  hideous  sufferings,  rather  than  abandon 
their  faith.  For  these  were  no  ascetic  monks,  dead  to  all 
the  hopes  and  passions  of  life,  but  were  men  who  appreciated 
intensely  the  worldly  advantages  they  relinquished,  and 
whose  affections  had  become  all  the  more  lively  on  account 


SAN  REMO:  THE  END  OF  AN  EPOCH  267 


of  the  narrow  circle  in  which  they  were  confined.  Enthusi¬ 
asm  and  the  strange  phenomena  of  ecstasy,  which  have 
exercised  so  large  an  influence  in  the  history  of  persecution, 
which  have  nerved  so  many  martyrs  with  superhuman 
courage,  and  have  deadened  or  destroyed  the  anguish  of  so 
many  fearful  tortures,  were  here  almost  unknown.  Persecu¬ 
tion  came  to  the  Jewish  nation  in  its  most  horrible  forms, 
yet  surrounded  by  every  circumstance  of  petty  annoyance 
that  could  destroy  its  grandeur,  and  it  continued  for  cen¬ 
turies  their  abiding  portion.1 

It  continued,  and  as  we  have  seen,  it  still  continues. 
But  now,  because  the  principle  of  the  rights  of  national 
minorities  has  been  incorporated  into  the  law  of  nations, 
because  of  the  Balfour  Declaration  and  the  Treaty 
of  San  Remo,  it  should  not,  if  science  maintains  its 
momentum  of  growth  and  industry  its  pace  of  ex¬ 
pansion,  fail  to  end.  These  principles  and  treaties 
are  conclusions,  not  beginnings.  They  are  signs  and 
portents  of  a  profound  alteration  in  the  mind  and 
commonsense  of  the  western  world.  Their  effective 
realization  is  still  remote,  difficult,  full  of  travail,  but 
the  significant  thing  is  that  they  could  be  formulated 
and  uttered  at  all.  Their  very  being  as  law  enables 
and  initiates  their  culmination  as  fact.  They  renatural¬ 
ize  the  Jew  as  Jew  in  the  world  from  which  he  has  been 
kept  outlaw  for  sixteen  hundred  years.  They  abolish 
the  ambiguity  of  the  Jewish  position.  They  destroy 
at  a  stroke  the  compulsion  upon  the  individual  Jew 
to  commit  moral  suicide  in  order  to  attain  civil  freedom 
or  social  equality.  The  Treaty  of  San  Remo  liberates 
both  the  Jew  who  wishes  to  assimilate  his  entity  to 
such  non- Jewish  nationalities  as  he  selects  and  as  will 


1,4 The  Rise  and  Influence  of  Rationalism  in  Europe,”  II.  ch.  6. 


268  ZIONISM  AND  WORLD  POLITICS 


receive  him,  and  the  Jew  who  wishes  to  identify  him¬ 
self  wholly  and  completely  with  his  own  people.  It 
liberates  the  former  because  it  supplies  him  with  a 
fixed  and  unmistakable  centre  of  reference  with  regard 
to  which  he  may  at  last  say,  beyond  cavil  or  question, 
“I  am  part  and  parcel  of  that,”  or  “I  am  not  part  and 
parcel  of  that”;  it  gives  him  an  equal  status  with 
the  Frenchman  or  Englishman  or  Belgian  or  Servian 
or  Italian  in  this  respect.  If  these,  or  the  members 
of  any  other  European  nationality,  constitute  no  prob¬ 
lem  like  the  Jewish  problem,  it  is  because  they 
have  never  been  outlawed  by  a  theological  system  in 
which  they  were  an  integral  item  from  the  fellowship 
of  mankind,  and  particularly  because  these  peoples 
actually  inhabit  as  majorities  politically  definite  areas 
universally  acknowledged  to  be  their  homelands. 
The  establishment  by  public  law  of  the  ancient  home 
of  the  Jewish  people  as  their  actual  centre  of  life  and 
labour  cannot  fail  to  work  the  same  effect  upon  the 
Jewish  position.  Enabling  the  assimilator  freely  at 
last  to  assimilate,  it  at  the  same  time  enables  the  Jew 
who  wishes  to  realize  all  the  potentialities  of  his  life 
as  a  Jew,  to  find  himself  in  an  integrated,  organic, 
free  Jewish  society,  where  he  may  fulfil  himself  Jewishly 
without  let  or  hindrance,  where  he  may  be  completely 
a  Jew  without  being  penalized  for  his  preference, 
where  being  a  Jew  shall  no  longer  be  identical  with 
possessing  the  perverse  and  psychopathic  traits  of  a 
persecuted  people. 

That  these  ends  can  be  attained  only  in  Palestine, 
the  whole  character  of  the  great  tradition  of  Europe 
and  of  the  Jewish  national  aspiration  as  a  part  of  that 
tradition  goes  to  show.  However,  let  Mr.  Balfour 


SAN  REMO:  THE  END  OF  AN  EPOCH  £69 


himself  speak  on  this  matter;  in  the  course  of  his  intro¬ 
duction1  to  Sokolow’s  “History  of  Zionism”  he  writes: 

.  .  .  Why  it  may  be  asked,  is  local  sentiment  to  be 

more  considered  in  the  case  of  the  Jew  than  (say)  in  that  of 
the  Christian  or  the  Buddhist?  All  historic  religions  rouse 
feelings  which  cluster  round  the  places  made  memorable  by 
the  words  and  deeds,  the  lives  and  deaths  of  those  who 
brought  them  into  being. 

Doubtless  these  feelings  should  always  be  treated  with 
respect;  but  no  one  suggests  that  the  regions  where  these 
venerable  sites  are  to  be  found  should,  of  set  purpose  and 
with  much  anxious  contrivance,  be  colonized  by  the  spiritual 
descendents  of  those  who  originally  made  them  famous. 
If  the  centuries  have  brought  no  change  of  ownership  or 
occupancy  we  are  well  content.  But  if  it  be  otherwise,  we 
make  no  effort  to  reverse  the  course  of  history.  None  sug¬ 
gest  that  we  should  plant  Buddhist  colonies  in  India,  the 
ancient  home  of  Buddhism,  or  renew  in  favour  of  Christen¬ 
dom  the  crusading  adventures  of  our  mediteval  ancestors. 
Yet,  if  this  be  wisdom  when  we  are  dealing  with  Buddhism 
and  Christianity,  why,  it  may  be  asked,  is  it  not  also  wisdom 
when  we  are  dealing  with  Judaism  and  the  Jews? 

The  answer  is,  that  the  cases  are  not  parallel.  The  posi¬ 
tion  of  the  Jews  is  unique.  For  them  race,  religion,  and 
country  are  inter-related  as  in  the  case  of  no  other  race,  no 
other  religion,  and  no  other  country  on  earth.  In  no  other 
case  are  the  believers  in  one  of  the  greatest  religions  of  the 
world  to  be  found  (speaking  broadly)  only  among  the  mem¬ 
bers  of  a  single  small  people;  in  the  case  of  no  other  religion 
is  its  past  development  so  intimately  bound  up  with  the  long 
political  history  of  a  petty  territory  wedged  in  between 
states  more  powerful  far  than  it  could  ever  be;  in  the  case 
of  no  other  religion  are  its  aspirations  and  hopes  expressed  in 
language  and  imagery  so  utterly  dependent  for  their  meaning 
on  the  conviction  that  only  from  this  one  land,  only  through 
this  one  history,  only  by  this  one  people,  is  full  religious 


Reprinted  in  pamphlet  form  by  the  Zionist  Organization  of  America. 


270  ZIONISM  AND  WORLD  POLITICS 


knowledge  to  spread  through  all  the  world.  By  a  strange 
and  most  unhappy  fate  it  is  this  people  of  all  others  which, 
retaining  to  the  full  its  racial  self-consciousness,  has  been 
severed  from  its  home,  has  wandered  into  all  lands,  and  has 
nowhere  been  able  to  create  for  itself  an  organized  social 
commonwealth.  Only  Zionism — so  at  least  Zionists  believe 
— can  provide  some  mitigation  of  this  great  tragedy  of  the 
Jewish  people. 

Doubtless  there  are  difficulties,  doubtless  there  are  objec¬ 
tions — great  difficulties,  very  real  objections.  And  it  is, 
I  suspect,  among  the  Jews  themselves  that  these  are  most 
acutely  felt.  Yet  no  one  can  reasonably  doubt  that  if,  as  I 
believe,  Zionism  can  be  developed  into  a  working  scheme, 
the  benefit  it  would  bring  to  the  Jewish  people,  especially 
perhaps  to  that  section  of  it  which  most  deserves  our  pity, 
would  be  great  and  lasting.  It  is  not  merely  that  large 
numbers  of  them  would  thus  find  a  refuge  from  religious 
and  social  persecution;  but  that  they  would  bear  corporate 
responsibilities  and  enjoy  corporate  opportunities  of  a 
kind  which,  from  the  nature  of  the  case,  they  can  never 
possess  as  citizens  of  any  non- Jewish  state.  It  is  charged 
against  them  by  their  critics  that  they  now  employ  their 
great  gifts  to  exploit  for  personal  ends  a  civilization  which 
they  have  not  created  in  communities  they  do  little  to  main¬ 
tain.  The  accusation  thus  formulated  is  manifestly  false. 
But  it  is  no  doubt  true  that  in  large  parts  of  Europe  their 
loyalty  to  the  state  in  which  they  dwell  is  (to  put  it  mildly) 
feeble  compared  with  their  loyalty  to  their  religion  and  their 
race.  How,  indeed,  could  it  be  otherwise?  In  none  of  the 
regions  of  which  I  speak  have  they  been  given  the  advantage 
of  equal  citizenship;  in  some  they  have  been  given  no  right 
of  citizenship  at  all.  Great  suffering  is  the  inevitable  result; 
but  not  suffering  alone.  Other  evils  follow  which  ag¬ 
gravate  the  original  mischief.  Constant  oppression,  with 
occasional  outbursts  of  violent  persecution,  are  apt  either 
to  crush  their  victims,  or  to  develop  in  them  self -protecting 
qualities  which  do  not  always  assume  an  attractive  shape. 
The  Jews  have  never  been  crushed.  Neither  cruelty  nor 
contempt,  neither  unequal  laws  nor  illegal  oppression,  have 


SAN  REMO:  THE  END  OF  AN  EPOCH  271 


ever  broken  their  spirit,  or  shattered  their  unconquerable 
hopes.  But  it  may  well  be  true  that,  where  they  have  been 
compelled  to  live  among  their  neighbours  as  if  these  were 
their  enemies,  they  have  often  obtained  and  sometimes  de¬ 
served  the  reputation  of  being  undesirable  citizens.  Nor  is 
this  surprising.  If  you  oblige  many  men  to  be  money¬ 
lenders,  some  will  assuredly  be  usurers.  If  you  treat  an 
important  section  of  the  community  as  outcasts  they  will 
hardly  shine  as  patriots.  Thus  does  intolerance  blindly 
labour  to  create  the  justification  for  its  own  excesses. 

It  seems  evident  that,  for  these  and  other  reasons,  Zionism 
will  mitigate  the  lot  and  elevate  the  status  of  no  negligible 
fraction  of  the  Jewish  race.  Those  who  go  to  Palestine  will 
not  be  like  those  who  migrate  to  London  or  New  York. 
They  will  not  be  animated  merely  by  the  desire  to  lead  in 
happier  surroundings  the  kind  of  life  they  formerly  led  in 
eastern  Europe.  They  will  go  in  order  to  join  a  civil  com¬ 
munity  which  completely  harmonizes  with  their  historical 
and  religious  sentiments;  a  community  bound  to  the  land 
it  inhabits  by  something  deeper  even  than  custom:  a  com¬ 
munity  whose  members  will  suffer  from  no  unequal  laws 
under  which  they  are  forced  to  live.  To  them  the  material 
gain  should  be  great;  but  surely  the  spiritual  gain  will  be 
greater  still. 

But  these,  it  will  be  said,  are  not  the  only  Jews  whose 
welfare  we  have  to  consider.  Granting,  if  only  for  argu¬ 
ment’s  sake,  that  Zionism  will  on  them  confer  a  benefit, 
will  it  not  inflict  an  injury  upon  others  who,  though  Jews 
by  descent,  and  often  by  religion,  desire  wholly  to  identify 
themselves  with  the  life  of  the  country  wherein  they  have 
made  their  home?  Among  these  are  to  be  found  some  of 
the  most  gifted  members  of  the  race.  Their  ranks  contain 
(at  least,  so  I  think)  more  than  their  proportionate  share  of 
the  world’s  supply  of  men  distinguished  in  science  and  phi¬ 
losophy,  literature  and  art  and  medicine,  politics  and  law. 
(Of  finance  and  business  I  need  say  nothing.) 

Now  there  is  no  doubt  that  many  of  this  class  look  with 
a  certain  measure  of  suspicion  and  even  dislike  upon  the 
Zionist  movement.  They  fear  that  it  will  adversely  affect 


ZIONISM  AND  WORLD  POLITICS 


their  position  in  the  country  of  their  adoption.  The  great 
majority  of  them  have  no  desire  to  settle  in  Palestine.  Even 
supposing  a  Zionist  community  were  established,  they  would 
not  join  it.  But  they  seem  to  think  (if  I  understand  them 
rightly)  that  so  soon  as  such  a  community  came  into  being 
men  of  Jewish  blood,  still  more  men  of  Jewish  religion,  would 
be  regarded  by  unkindly  critics  as  out  of  place  elsewhere. 
The  ancient  home  having  been  restored  to  them  they  would 
be  expected  to  reside  there. 

I  cannot  share  these  fears.  I  do  not  deny  that,  in  some 
countries  where  legal  equality  is  not  firmly  established,  Jews 
may  still  be  regarded  with  a  certain  measure  of  prejudice. 
But  this  prejudice,  where  it  exists,  is  not  due  to  Zionism, 
nor  will  Zionism  embitter  it.  The  tendency  should  surely 
be  the  other  way.  Everything  which  assimilates  the  na¬ 
tional  and  international  status  of  the  Jews  to  that  of  other 
races  ought  to  mitigate  what  remains  of  ancient  antipathies; 
and  evidently  this  assimilation  would  be  promoted  by  giving 
them  that  which  all  other  nations  possess :  a  local  habitation 
and  a  national  home. 

Mr.  Balfour,  although  a  statesman,  is  an  under¬ 
standing  man.  His  eye,  in  this  instance,  at  least,  is 
upon  those  essential  trends  in  society  which  determine 
the  success  or  failure  of  the  expedients  of  politicians 
and  the  devices  of  diplomacy.  He  recognized  the 
extraordinary  role  of  Palestine  in  the  Jewish  psyche; 
he  observes  the  effects  on  that  psyche  of  outlawry 
and  persecution,  and  he  is  explicit  in  his  recognition 
that  the  solution  of  the  difficulty  inherent  in  the  Jewish 
position  must  lie  in  that  equalization  of  status  for 
both  the  group  and  the  individual  which  is  the  essence 
of  democracy.  Equality  of  status  does  not  mean, 
it  must  be  remembered,  identity  of  character  or  func¬ 
tion.  It  means,  if  anything,  freedom  for  the  develop¬ 
ment  and  operation  of  differences  of  character  and 


SAN  REMO:  THE  END  OF  AN  EPOCH  273 


function  in  which  progress  consists.  The  assimilation 
of  “the  national  and  international  status  of  the  Jews 
to  that  of  other  races”  cannot  fail  not  only  “to  mitigate 
what  remains  of  ancient  antipathies,”  it  cannot  fail 
to  reenforce  also  and  to  invigorate  that  new  tendency 
of  the  European  mind  whereby  a  European  statesman 
of  conservative  principles  can  be  so  oblivious  of  an 
ancient  tradition  as  to  utter  the  sentiment  for  equaliza¬ 
tion  as  a  principle  and  lay  it  down  as  a  programme. 


CHAPTER  XIX 


“vita  ntjova?” 

BY  THE  Treaty  of  San  Remo  the  Jews  are  faced 
with  a  problem  unprecedented  in  the  history  of  their 
Diaspora.  The  treaty  is  a  legal  formula,  a  promissory 
note,  whose  ultimate  validation  depends  far  more  upon 
those  to  whom  it  is  given  than  those  by  whom  it  is 
given.  Speed  and  range  are  essential  to  the  success 
of  the  validation,  and  both  hang  upon  the  adequacy 
of  the  reorientation  of  the  Jewish  position  which  the 
implications  of  the  treaty  require.  There  is  no  help 
toward  this  reorientation  in  a  study  of  the  past;  nor 
has  there  been  any  preparation  for  it  in  the  present. 
The  situation  demanding  it  has  ripened  so  swiftly 
and  under  conditions  of  so  much  doubt  and  anxiety 
that  if  the  confusion  of  counsel  prevailing  among  the 
Jews  is  any  indication,  its  coming  has  taken  them  by 
surprise.  Within  six  of  the  most  trying  years  in  the 
history  of  the  western  world,  six  of  the  most  bitterly 
tragic  years  in  the  history  of  the  Jews,  a  tradition 
of  consolatory  aspiration  has  been  precipitated  into  a 
condition  of  compelling  fact.  By  public  law  and  in¬ 
ternational  guarantees  of  hope  of  Zion,  which  was  an 
age-old  sentiment  and  a  compensatory  fantasy,  has 
been  turned  into  the  hope  of  Zion  which  is  the  hard, 
barren,  sordid  geographical  and  ethnographic  reality 
of  Palestine,  with  its  needs  of  economic  rehabilitation 

274 


“VITA  NUOVA?” 


275 


and  cultural  development,  its  political  complications 
and  religious  cross-currents,  its  problems  of  public 
health  and  social  justice.  Although  in  recent  years 
much  has  been  written,  written  voluminously  and  with  a 
supremely  knowing  air,  particularly  by  the  experts-by- 
book  in  whom  Jewish  Palestine  abounds,  on  the  prob¬ 
lems  of  the  construction  of  the  Jewish  homeland,  what 
has  been  written  remains  in  the  realm  of  the  pleasant — 
and  irrelevant — speculation  that  has  been  character¬ 
istic  of  the  productions  in  this  field  from  the  beginning 
of  the  Hovevei  Zion  activity  in  Palestine.1  Nor  do 
the  only  less  official  activities  of  the  bureaus  of  the 
World  Zionist  Organization  and  of  its  advisory  bodies 
appear  to  have  been  more  pertinent.2  The  fact  is 
that  the  validation  of  the  Balfour  Declaration  by 
public  law  finds  the  Jews — both  the  masses  of  the  people 
and  the  organized  Zionists — unprepared;  the  continen¬ 
tal  communities  stripped  and  broken  and  despairful; 
the  Americans  exhausted  by  the  political  and  financial 
efforts  compelled  by  the  war;  the  British  too  confused 
by  the  political  entanglements  and  too  retarded  by 
the  weight  of  tradition,  which  counts  much  more 
heavily  among  the  Jews  of  England  than  of  America. 
Here  at  last  is  the  salutation  which  has  been  the  sus¬ 
taining  hope  of  the  heart  of  Jewry  through  the  bitter 
ages,  challenging  them  to  new  life.  Yet  the  manner 
in  which  they  respond  to  it  leaves  room  to  doubt 

1Oettinger:  “Colonization  in  Palestine”;  Ruppin:  “Der  Aufbau  des 
Landes  Israel”;  Oppenheimer:  “Merchavia”;  Poale  Zion  Commission:  “Re¬ 
port  on  the  Work  in  Palestine.” 

2Only  the  surveys  and  the  proposals  of  the  Occupied  Enemy  Territory 
Administration,  to  which  the  Zionists  were  not  permitted  access,  had  any 
regard  for  the  realities  of  the  Palestinian  economy — such  regard  as  is  possi¬ 
ble  to  the  capitalistically  minded.  Such  Zionist  proposals  as  have  been 
printed  somehow  keep  reminding  one  of  the  schemes  of  Col.  Sellars. 


276  ZIONISM  AND  WORLD  POLITICS 


whether  the  attainment  of  this  new  life  shall  not 
become  a  process  painful,  lingering,  and — disillusion¬ 
ing. 

The  reason  is  that  the  decision  of  San  Remo  effects 
what  is  practically  a  magical  change,  what  is  tanta¬ 
mount  to  a  metaphysical  transvaluation  in  the  char¬ 
acter  and  significance  of  Palestine  for  the  Jewish 
people.  And  how  quickly  and  completely  they  adjust 
themselves  to  this  transvaluation  must  needs  be  a 
large  item  in  the  settlement  of  their  fate.  Some 
inference  regarding  the  psychology  of  this  adjustment 
may  be  drawn  from  the  astounding  parade  which 
took  place,  on  May  25,  1920,  on  Fifth  Avenue,  in 
New  York  City.  The  marchers  in  this  parade  came 
from  all  the  strata  of  Jewish  society  in  America — 
millionaire  merchants,  rabbis,  great  bourgeois  and 
little  bourgeois,  workingmen,  veterans  of  the  Great 
War,  legionaries  returned  from  Palestine,  children, 
women.  They  intoned  psalms  and  they  sang  songs. 
And  there  was  that  in  their  voices  and  that  in  their 
glances  as  they  marched  and  sang,  they  the  freest 
and  most  secularized  of  the  Jews  of  the  world,  which 
brought  to  mind  what  one  had  read  of  religious  demon¬ 
strations  in  the  Middle  Ages,  what  one  had  seen 
of  great  evangelical  revival  meetings  in  one’s  own 
time.  The  phenomenon  was  a  religious  phenomenon, 
a  release  and  outpouring  of  hidden  streams  of  feel¬ 
ing,  and  bearing  the  ideology  of  an  immemorial 
past. 

To  these  also,  in  the  moment  of  crisis — even  joyful 
crisis — Palestine,  which  had  been  changed  from  an  ideal 
centre  of  other-worldly  emotion  into  a  locus  of  practical 
endeavour,  became  religious  again.  The  crisis  simply 


“VITA  NUOVA?” 


277 


brought  a  reversion  of  mind  to  that  basic  other-worldly 
tendency  whose  mitigation  has  been  the  chief  function 
and  best  effect  of  secular  Zionism.  If  the  mood  of 
the  parading  crowds  on  Fifth  Avenue  has  a  meaning, 
the  meaning  is  that  for  the  Diaspora  at  least  there  is 
the  danger  that  Zion  will  remain  what  it  always  has 
been — a  compensatory  ideal.  Those  who  do  not  live 
in  Palestine  have  ever  been  too  ready  to  give  as  a  some¬ 
how  religious  duty,  and  those  who  do  live  in  Palestine 
have  been  ever  too  ready  to  take  as  a  somehow  religious 
right,  what,  is  after  all,  nothing  more  or  less  than 
charity.1  The  Zionist  organization,  in  a  very  great 
degree  in  spite  of  itself,  has  been  an  eleemosynary 
institution,  and  the  Jewish  inhabitants  of  Palestine, 
only  in  very  sporadic  instances  in  spite  of  themselves, 
have  been  objects  of  philanthropy.  The  emotional 
survivals  which  manifest  themselves  by  the  readiness 
of  Jewry  outside  the  land  to  give  become  with  the 
application  of  the  Treaty  of  San  Remo  a  thing  sinister: 
the  continuance  of  the  eleemosynary  activities  ac¬ 
quires  an  ominous  import.  Their  discontinuance,  or 
rather,  their  alteration  into  a  programme  relevant  to 
the  new  status  of  Palestine,  requires  a  change  of  heart 
which  conditions  on  the  European  continent  to  a  large 
degree  preclude,  and  of  which  at  the  present  writing2 
there  is  no  sign  in  England  or  in  America.  Nowhere 
except  among  the  handful  of  American  leaders  does 
there  appear  to  be  any  adequate  realization  that  Pales¬ 
tine  is  not  any  longer  a  symbolic  vision  of  an  other¬ 
worldly  future  of  salvation  from  death  and  the  fear 
of  death;  that  Palestine  is  at  last  a  present  solid  and 


1  Vid.  supra.  Chapters  IX  and  X. 

2  July,  1921. 


278  ZIONISM  AND  WORLD  POLITICS 


coercive  fact,  whose  saving  power  can  be  brought  into 
operation  only  by  swift  and  extensive  readjustments 
of  temper  and  attitude;  readjustments,  moreover,  not 
merely  to  Palestine,  an  und  fur  sich,  as  Hegel  used  to 
say,  but  to  the  specific  and  concrete  and  living  Palestine 
which  is  a  node  in  a  network  of  complicated  relation¬ 
ships  that  stretch  from  England  to  India  and  around 
the  world,  involving  the  whole  economic  process  of 
modern  civilization,  with  its  political  and  ethnographical 
and  religious  relationships. 

This  Palestine,  the  Palestine  that  has  been  the  object 
of  racial  rivalries  and  the  subject  of  imperialist  ex¬ 
ploitation,  the  Palestine  of  the  Arab  fellahin  and  the 
Jewish  Halukah-takers,  the  Palestine  that  Allenby 
conquered  and  that  the  Treaty  of  San  Remo  allocated, 
this  and  no  other  it  is  that  the  Jews  are  to  build  their 
national  home  upon.  And  this  Palestine  is  a  challenge 
— no  easy  one — to  the  competency,  the  realism,  and 
the  moral  enthusiasm  of  the  Jews  of  the  entire  world. 
The  meeting  of  this  challenge — the  success  of  which 
alone  can  establish  that  normalization  of  the  Jewish 
position  in  which  all  Jews  have  a  stake — will  be  watched 
by  a  world  far  from  unanimous  in  its  friendliness.  Our 
survey  of  the  mind  of  Europe,  past  and  present,  re¬ 
garding  the  Jews  shows  that  the  climax  has  been 
reached.  The  alternative  to  success  in  Palestine 
and  coordinately,  normalization  in  the  Diaspora,  is 
destruction — violently  as  in  central  Europe,  or  through 
progressively  swifter  assimilation  as  in  the  United 
States.  But  the  old  ambiguity  of  the  Jewish  position 
is  doomed. 

The  situation  created  by  the  San  Remo  decision  thus 
demands  from  the  Jews  a  new  attitude  and  new  func- 


“VITA  NUOVA?” 


279 


tions.  In  the  course  of  time,  the  situation  would  no 
doubt  evoke  the  attitude  appropriate  to  itself;  but 
time  is  here,  as  in  military  operations,  an  essential  in 
determining  failure  or  success.  The  new  attitude  must 
be  created  as  foresight  and  establish  itself  as  habit, 
instead  of  merely  establishing  itself  as  habit;  it  must  be 
a  plan  before  it  is  a  process.  The  new  functions  re¬ 
quire  new  organs,  and  these  again  cannot  be  waited 
for  to  grow;  they  must  be  created  ad  hoc.  Hence, 
in  its  present  form,  the  Zionist  organization  is  irrelevant 
to  the  realities  of  the  Zionist  position.  Secular  though 
the  movement  it  expresses  may  be,  it  rests,  neverthe¬ 
less,  upon  a  fund  of  unconscious  feelings  and  trends 
which  are  introverted,  compensatory,  and  defensive 
rather  than  objective  and  adjustive.  As  a  consequence, 
its  fiscal  institutions,  for  example,  have  not  been  con¬ 
spicuous  for  economic  insight  or  even  intelligent  admin¬ 
istration.  Both  the  Jewish  Colonial  Trust  with  its 
subsidiaries  and  the  Jewish  National  Fund  are  in  need 
of  fundamental  reorganization — in  method,  function, 
and  personnel.  Their  assets  must  be  made  liquid, 
their  bookkeeping  modern,  and  their  policies  regardful 
of  the  realities  of  a  Palestine  to  be  settled  by  self- 
supporting  and  not  supported  Jews. 

The  other  institutions  of  the  movement,  again,  its 
Congress  and  its  executive  agencies,  have  been  too  much 
postulated  upon  propaganda  and  philanthropy.  In¬ 
evitably  so,  no  doubt,  since  the  Jews  have  so  long  been  a 
disfranchised  and  landless  people,  and  the  only  peculiar 
institutions  they  have  been  able  to  develop  in  the  course 
of  their  long  life  in  Europe  have  been  those  of  their 
religion,  their  charity,  and  their  literary  culture.  But 
whatever  the  reason,  Zionism  has  been  over  too  great  a 


280  ZIONISM  AND  WORLD  POLITICS 


period  dominated  by  cultural  conceptions  to  the  ex¬ 
clusion  of  more  fundamental  economic  and  political 
ones,1  and  its  leadership  had,  prior  to  the  war,  been 
drawn  too  exclusively  from  journalists,  orators,  lay 
preachers,  schoolmasters,  and  such,  all  excellent  for 
purposes  of  propaganda  and  instruction,  helpless, 
as  events  showed  again  and  again,  particularly  during 
the  years  of  the  war,  to  meet  fundamental  situations 
in  fundamental  terms.  What  the  war  created  as  an 
occasion,  the  peace  converts  into  constant  necessity. 
The  international  Zionist  organization  needs  a  com¬ 
plete  recasting  of  its  form  and  technique  if  it  is 
effectively  to  carry  out  its  new  functions.  It  needs 
a  complete  overhauling  of  its  personnel.  In  this,  it 
is  face  to  face  with  its  acid  test.  Its  leadership  is 
face  to  face  with  its  acid  test.  For  such  an  over¬ 
hauling  and  reconstruction  require  a  decision  between 
public  duty  and  personal  position  which  those  who 
are  acquainted  with  the  temperament  of  the  orator  and 
writer  and  such  know  is  neither  easy  nor  a  foregone 
conclusion.  A  propaganda  organization  whose  object 
invariably  touches  off  fundamental  emotions  and  whose 
realization  is  remote  easily  becomes  an  end  in  itself 
at  the  expense  of  its  object — political  parties  are 
perennial  examples — the  instrument  displaces  the  end, 
the  camel  drives  the  master  from  the  tent.  A  rehabili¬ 
tation  of  the  essential  relationships  may  then  become 
extremely  difficult  or  even  impossible.  This  is  a  danger 
of  which  the  Zionists  may  well  beware. 

The  purpose  of  Zionism  is  now  the  effective  establish¬ 
ment  of  the  Jewish  Commonwealth  in  Palestine. 
Logically,  if  this  purpose  can  be  best  accomplished 


1Cf.  su-pra,  Chapters  VII  and  VIII. 


“VITA  NUOVA?” 


281 


through  keeping  the  Zionist  organization  intact,  then 
it  should  be  kept  intact.  If  it  can  be  best  accomplished 
by  entirely  making  over  the  Zionist  organization,  then 
it  should  be  made  over,  and  if  it  can  be  best  accom¬ 
plished  by  abolishing  the  Zionist  organization,  then  it 
should  be  abolished.  Of  course  no  such  logical  con¬ 
sideration  of  alternatives  is  likely  to  take  place;  the 
same  trend  by  which  a  child  clings  for  years  to  a  rag- 
doll,  in  spite  of  many  better-made  and  more  satis¬ 
factory  playthings,  makes  men  cling  to  antiquated 
tools  and  survival-types  of  organization,  particularly 
if  their  vanities  and  sense  of  personal  worth  and 
achievement  cohere  in  them:  livelihoods  need  in  this 
connection  not  be  mentioned,  for  there  are  none  or 
few.  In  the  case  of  the  Zionists,  thus,  the  problem 
is  critical.1 


^ince  the  above  was  written  news  comes  from  London  bearing  out  the 
analysis.  At  the  Annual  Conference  of  1920,  Mr.  Justice  Brandeis  proposed 
a  fundamental  reconstruction  that  would  actually  have  subordinated  the 
organization  to  its  purposes  and  that  would  have  created  for  it  organs  ade¬ 
quate  to  the  new  functions  which  the  situation  requires.  The  proposal 
failed  of  acceptance,  largely  through  the  type  of  motive  discussed  above. 
The  subsequent  activities  of  the  officers  of  the  international  organization 
seem  to  have  been  determined  thereby  to  the  point  of  a  complete  break  with 
the  realistic  American  leaders  who  demanded  that  administrative  integrity 
should  replace  sentimental  looseness,  and  the  economic  needs  of  Palestine 
should  take  precedence  over  the  organization  politics  of  Zionism.  This 
demand  was  apparently  granted.  The  business  of  the  new  Inner  Actions 
Committee  which  was  chosen  at  the  London  Conference  was  to  be  reor¬ 
ganization  and  retrenchment  in  both  London  and  Jerusalem,  and  construc¬ 
tion  in  Palestine.  A  Reorganization  Commission,  with  full  power,  was  ap¬ 
pointed  to  undertake  the  work  in  Palestine.  But  its  activities  were  nullified 
before  they  were  begun,  and  two  members  of  the  Commission,  Messrs  Simon 
and  DeLieme,  who  were  also  members  of  Inner  Actions  Committee,  were 
forced  into  resignation.  The  immediate  cause  of  their  resignation  was  a 
secret  agreement  made  by  Doctor  Weizmann  with  M.  Jabotinsky  by  which 
M.  Jabotinsky,  who  had  failed  of  election  to  the  Inner  Actions  Committee 
at  the  London  Conference,  was  to  be  added  to  it,  with  the  understanding  that 
the  conditions  on  which  he  assumed  membership  would  be  met.  These 
conditions  were  that  the  controls  which  the  World  Zionist  Organization 
exercised  over  the  Keren  Hayesod  would  be  abolished.  The  Keren 
Hayesod,  or  Foundation  Fund,  was  the  new  fiscal  agency  which  had,  by  a 


282  ZIONISM  AND  WORLD  POLITICS 


It  is  the  more  critical  because,  without  its  solution, 
there  cannot  be  accomplished,  within  a  reasonable 
time,  that  change  in  the  Jewish  habit  of  mind  regarding 
Palestine  upon  which  the  successful  establishment  of 
the  Jewish  homeland  is  postulated.  Both  the  feeling 
and  action  of  the  people  need  to  be  redirected  so  as  to 
work  in  relevant  and  not  defensive  or  compensatory 
ways  toward  the  upbuilding  of  the  restored  Jewish 
homeland.  Such  a  redirection  cannot  be  accomplished 


vague  resolution,  been  ordered  by  the  London  Conference.  Its  control  was 
like  that  of  the  other  financial  institutions  of  the  Zionist  Movement,  kept 
in  the  hands  of  the  World  Zionist  Organization  by  giving  it  fifty-one  per  cent, 
of  the  voting  power,  which  was  exercised  for  it  by  a  governor  appointed  for 
that  purpose  by  the  Inner  Actions  Committee.  It  was  this  control  that  was 
abolished.  Under  the  charter  which  was  subsequently  drawn  for  it,  the 
Keren  Hayesod  becomes  a  corporation  with  unlimited  powers,  of  such  a  sort 
that  it  may  displace  both  the  Zionist  Congress  and  its  executive  agencies. 
The  American  leaders  were  opposed  to  this.  They  had  found  reason  to  mis¬ 
trust  the  integrity  and  the  competency  of  some  of  the  administrative  officers 
in  both  London  and  Palestine.  These,  they  had  discovered,  had  been  con¬ 
stantly  exceeding  the  budget,  had  diverted  trust-funds  to  meet  current 
expenses;  had,  without  authority  or  right,  made  use  of  non-Zionist  monies 
for  Zionist  purposes,  and  violated  the  integrity  and  broken  the  statutes  of 
the  Jewish  National  Fund. 

The  explanations  offered  by  DoctorWeizmann  for  himself  and  his  colleagues 
were  those  of  emergency  and  necessity.  They  rationalized  these  explana¬ 
tions  in  terms  of  what  they  called  a  “philosophy”  of  the  Zionist  position — 
namely,  that  Palestine  and  the  Jewish  National  Home  are  not  identical, 
and  that  it  is  the  business  of  the  Zionists  to  make  the  two  identical.  Differ¬ 
ences  of  opinion  and  policy  between  the  representatives  of  the  national 
Jewish  interest  in  Palestine  and  the  British  colonial  interest  were  not  only 
possible,  they  were  inevitable.  Jewish  activities  in  Palestine  must  be  such 
as  would  be  sure  to  attain  the  Jewish  objective.  Although  those  of  the 
mandatory  would  often  be  in  harmony  with  them,  quite  as  often  they  would 
not  be.  Hence  the  need  for  the  Keren  Hayesod,  hence  the  justification  of 
budgetary  looseness  and  the  other  irregularities.  Hence  the  need  for  a 
strong  centralized  Zionist  organization,  for  work  in  the  Diaspora,  for  Dias¬ 
pora  Nationalism,  and  all  the  complications  of  a  propaganda-organization. 

To  which  the  American  reply  indicates  that  the  American  leaders  agree 
with  the  “philosophy,”  but  do  not  see  how  the  conclusions  of  Dr.  Weizmann 
and  his  colleagues  can  be  drawn  from  the  premises  it  supplies.  With  respect 
to  the  Keren  Hayesod,  to  budgetary  and  other  irregularities,  they  drew  the 
exactly  opposite  conclusions.  (See  the  Annual  Report  of  Zionist  Organiza¬ 
tion  of  America,  for  the  period  November  1,  1920,  to  May  31,  1921,  particu¬ 
larly,  Exhibit  3.)  The  differences  did  not  lie  in  “philosophy.”  They  lay  in 
the  fact  that  the  Americans  were  thinking  in  terms  of  the  economic  actualities 


“VITA  NUOVA?” 


283 


through  propaganda  merely.  Whatever  success  ac¬ 
crued  to  the  propagandist  movement,  prior  to  the 
Great  War,  was  itself  something  in  the  nature  of  an 
unearned  increment  upon  the  existing  funds  of  feeling 
and  the  instituted  will  of  the  Jewish  masses  regarding 
Palestine.  The  corrective  and  salvational  character 
of  the  feeling  has  already  been  indicated;  it  keeps 
Palestine  still  so  much  a  gratifying  fantasy  in  the  con¬ 
sciousness  of  the  masses  that  they  resent  any  realistic 


of  Palestine  and  the  Diaspora,  and  the  Europeans  were  thinking  in  terms  of 
the  political  complications  within  the  Zionist  Organization.  Consequently, 
Doctor  Weizmann  and  his  colleagues  resented  the  resolution  adopted  by  the 
Convention  of  the  Zionist  Organization  of  America  at  Buffalo,  on  November 
28,  1921,  which  separated  donation  from  investment  funds,  and  otherwise 
sought  to  keep  Zionist  activity  in  Palestine  on  solid  ground.  In  answer  to  his 
letter  embodying  his  objections,  Judge  Mack  was  directed  by  the  National 
Executive  Committee  to  formulate  a  reply  which  should  embody  “a  detailed 
statement  on  the  position  of  the  American  Organization.”  This  reply  took 
the  form  of  a  memorandum  (Exhibit  3  of  the  Report  mentioned  above) 
which  was  submitted  to  Doctor  Weizmann  on  his  arrival  in  the  United  States 
in  April  accompanied  by  Messrs.  Ussishkin  and  Mossinsohn,  from  Palestine, 
and  conducting  Albert  Einstein. 

Negotiations  began  which  revealed  at  once  a  deep  fissure  between  the 
American  leaders  on  the  one  side  and  the  Europeans  on  the  other.  In  the 
National  Executive  Committee  itself  a  minority,  the  customary  opposition, 
had  voted  against  the  memorandum  and  had  dissociated  itself  from  its 
representations.  This  minority  took  sides  with  Weizmann  and  his  colleagues. 
As  time  went  on,  the  fissure  widened  and  deepened.  The  Yiddish  press,  with 
the  exception  of  one  paper,  was  solid  against  the  American  leaders.  The 
minority  conducted  a  powerful  propaganda  against  them.  The  accusation, 
made  by  Weizmann  even  before  the  London  Conference,  that  they  con¬ 
templated  a  Zionist  “Monroe  Doctrine,”  and  taken  up  by  the  American 
opposition  after  the  Conference  as  a  rallying  cry,  was  shouted  from  the 
housetops.  They  were  accused  of  secession  from  the  World  Zionist  Organiza¬ 
tion,  they  were  accused  of  rebellion  against  the  duly-constituted  authority 
of  Weizmann  and  his  Keren  Hayesod.  They  were  particularly  accused  of 
being  disregardful  of  the  respect  due  to  distinguished  guests.  It  was  said 
that  they  were  not  Jews,  that  they  did  not  understand  the  heart  of  the  Jewish 
people;  that  they  were  autocrats,  out  of  touch  with  the  democracy. 

That  they  were  out  of  touch,  and  very  completely  out  of  touch,  soon 
became  obvious.  The  facts  they  pointed  to,  the  records  they  published,  were 
denounced  by  the  press  and  the  minority  as  exaggerations  or  mitigated  as 
“emergencies.”  Tlieir  explanation  that  far  from  seceding,  it  was  they 
who  were  protecting  the  integrity  of  the  World  Zionist  Organization  from 
usurpation  fell  on  deaf  ears.  Their  plea  that  they  were  seeking  to  protect 
the  honour  of  the  World  Zionist  Organization  by  securing  standards  of  trustee- 


284  ZIONISM  AND  WORLD  POLITICS 


account  of  its  own  character  or  that  of  its  Jewish 
inhabitants.  To  overcome  this,  how  much  careful 
teaching  will  they  not  need  that  a  happy  Palestine 
to-morrow  implies  complete  disillusion  about  Palestine’s 
to-day.  They  will  require  a  new  ideology,  a  new  phi¬ 
losophy  of  Zion,  established  as  habit  in  thought  and  in 
action,  through  a  new  objective,  new  institutions, 
and  a  new  technique.  There  should  be  no  fear  that 


ship  and  the  customary  safeguards  for  trust  funds  was  ignored.  That  the 
officers  of  administration  in  Palestine  “did  not  put  the  money  in  their  own 
pockets”  but  used  it  for  Zionist  purposes  was  regarded  as  sufficient  vindi¬ 
cation  of  their  honesty  and  their  efficiency.  “Our  Weizmann,”  “Our 
Ussishkin,”  Zionists  for  so  long,  the  press  and  the  orators  declared, 
could  do  no  wrong;  these  accusations  grew  out  of  the  secessionism  of 
the  autocratic  newcomers  in  the  movement,  like  Mack  and  Brandeis. 
In  a  word,  American  Jewry  was  in  the  grip  of  a  wave  of  emotion,  a  religion¬ 
like  frenzy  with  Weizmann  and  the  Keren  Hayesod  as  its  objects  of  worship, 
which  made  it  as  impervious  to  the  realities  of  the  case  as  any  country 
community  under  the  influence  of  the  evangelical  revivalist.  Pledges  of  all 
sorts  and  sizes  were  made  to  the  Keren  Hayesod  which  Weizmann  formally 
opened  by  proclamation  on  April  17,  1921.  Reception  committees  were 
organized  and  passionate  meetings  held.  The  delegates  to  the  Convention 
which  the  majority  of  the  Executive  Committee  decided  to  call  for  a  determi¬ 
nation  of  the  issue,  were  overwhelmingly  instructed  against  Judge  Mack  and 
his  administration.  Upon  the  rejection  of  his  report,  by  a  vote  of  139  to 
75 — acceptance  would  have  been  tantamount  to  a  vote  of  confidence — he  aind 
more  than  two  thirds  of  the  Executive  Committee  resigned,  declaring  at  the 
same  time  that  they  could  not  hold  any  office  in  the  Zionist  Organization  so 
long  as  it  was  opposed  to  the  principles  for  which  they  stood.  Simultane¬ 
ously,  a  letter  was  read  from  M.  Justice  Brandeis  endorsing  the  stand  taken 
by  Judge  Mack  and  his  associates,  and  resigning  as  Honorary  President  of 
the  Zionist  Organization  of  America.  He  has  also  tendered  his  resignation  as 
Honorary  President  of  the  World  Zionist  Organization. 

Thus,  in  the  United  States,  in  Europe  and  in  Palestine,  the  responsibility  for 
the  future,  so  far  as  it  is  in  the  hands  of  the  Zionist  Organization,  falls  squarely 
and  unequivocally  upon  the  pre-war  propagandist  group.  The  American 
leadership — for  although  rejected  by  a  majority  they  will  be  responded  to 
as  a  leadership  because  of  their  distinction  of  character,  their  position  in  public 
life,  their  moral  authority,  and  their  unparalleled  services  to  the  cause — are 
now  liberated  from  the  restrictions  set  upon  their  work  for  Palestine  by  the 
past  and  politics  of  the  Zionist  Organizaton.  They  can  go  at  the  task  of 
upbuilding  Jewish  Palestine  as  a  living  economy  without  internal  hindrance. 
At  the  conference  they  held  with  their  followers  in  Cleveland  after  the  rejec¬ 
tion  of  Judge  Mack’s  report,  they  determined  to  do  so.  Time  alone  can 
show  whether  they  are  capable  of  the  success  in  which  must  lie  their  vindica¬ 
tion. 


“VITA  NUOVA?” 


285 


such  a  philosophy  need  or  can  be  a  break  with  the  old. 
It  will  differ  from  the  old  because  inevitably  it  must 
rest  upon  a  different  set  of  determining  conditions 
and  must  consist  of  the  development  and  rounding-out 
of  the  implications  of  these  conditions;  but  within 
this  development  the  old  cannot  fail  to  be  absorbed 
and  transmuted. 

These  determining  conditions  are  organically  inter¬ 
related.  They  differ  from  those  which  grounded  the 
Basle  Programme  in  that  they  are  positive  rather  than 
negative.  The  conditions  that  led  Herzl  to  his  great 
enterprise  still,  as  we  have  seen,  obtain  and  are  likely 
to  obtain,  for  generations  to  come.  But  now  they 
are  essentially  at  the  periphery  of  the  Jews’  problem, 
not  at  its  centre.  With  the  San  Remo  decision  the 
Basle  Programme  has  been  realized.  And  with  the 
realization  of  the  Basle  programme  the  centre  of  the 
Jews’  problem  has  shifted  from  the  Diaspora  to  Pales¬ 
tine.  Americans  have  expressed  the  change  in  the 
formula  that  the  Basle  Programme  must  be  replaced 
by  the  Pittsburgh  Programme.  What  they  mean  is 
that  the  nature  of  the  free  Jewish  commonwealth, 
which  in  the  fullness  of  time  is  to  grow  up  and  function 
in  Palestine,  has  become  the  norm-giving  objective 
in  the  affairs  of  the  Jewish  people. 

The  conditions  which  set  the  formal  limits  and  imply 
the  constitutional  pattern  of  this  commonwealth  are, 
broadly  speaking,  of  three  orders — political,  ethno¬ 
graphic,  and  economic.  Of  these  the  first  is  the  most 
immediate,  closest  to  the  apparent  and  given  motives 
of  men;  the  second  is  the  most  instinctive,  but  manifest 
rather  in  terms  of  aesthetic  and  religion,  in  terms  of 
cultural  nationality;  the  last  is  the  most  coercive, 


286  ZIONISM  AND  WORLD  POLITICS 


determining  the  form  of  the  community,  its  tempo, 
and  its  power. 

To  consider  them  in  their  order: 

I 

The  political  complex  in  which  Palestine  is  an  item 
exhibits  the  same  duplexity  which  has  already  been 
observed  in  the  Treaty  of  Versailles,  its  consequents 
and  derivatives.  The  elements  of  this  duplexity 
are  an  imperialistic  drive  in  foreign  policy  coupled 
with  what  is  practically  a  class-war  in  domestic  affairs. 
The  more  sharply  defined  the  latter  is,  the  more  uncer¬ 
tain  and  vacillating  is  the  former.  Thus,  the  strength 
of  the  Labour  Party  in  Great  Britain  can  be  measured 
by  the  changes  in  the  Government’s  policy  toward 
Egypt,  toward  India,  toward  Mesopotamia,  toward 
Russia.  The  changes  in  all  these  items  are  in  the 
direction  indicated  by  the  ideology  of  the  Fourteen 
Points — national  self-government,  democracy,  non¬ 
interference  in  the  internal  affairs  of  other  countries. 
In  France,  on  the  other  hand,  which  has  a  prevailingly 
agricultural  economy,  organized  labour  is  weak,  and 
the  imperialism  of  the  French  has  become  the  effective 
successor  of  the  imperialism  of  the  Germans.  The 
weakness  may  be  measured  by  the  treatment  accorded 
by  the  French  to  the  Syrians,  to  Feisal;  by  their  in¬ 
trigues  in  central  Europe  with  Poland  and  Hungary 
against  Russia,  and  in  America  with  political  oppon¬ 
ents  of  the  government  against  President  Wilson’s 
conception  of  peace  terms  and  the  League  of  Nations.1 


1  Cf.  the  press  reports  of  conferences  between  Senator  Lodge  and  French 
officials  regarding  peace  terms  during  the  winter  and  summer  of  1919  and 
the  announcement  of  a  set  of  terms  by  Senator  Lodge  remarkably  like  those 


“VITA  NUOVA?” 


287 


Now  the  governments  of  both  France  and  Great 
Britain  are  pledged  to  the  realization  of  the  Balfour 
Declaration  in  fact.  Both  have  underwritten  it  in 
the  Treaty  of  San  Remo. 

But  here  the  similarity  ends.  For  the  French  this 
underwriting  is  an  item  incidental  to  the  game  of  im¬ 
perialism,  to  be  adhered  to  or  repudiated  as  advantage 
and  opportunity  require.  The  underwriting  is  an 
action  of  the  French  Government  to  which  the  French 
people  are  indifferent  or  slightly  hostile,  but  in  which 
they  have  no  direct  emotional  or  practical  concern. 
For  the  English,  on  the  other  hand,  the  underwriting 
has  a  background  of  extensive  and  thorough-going 
public  discussion.  It  is  an  action  representing — bar 
certain  vested  missionary  and  ecclesiastical  interests 
and  professional  anti-Semites — the  united  will  of  all 
the  people.  Not  the  government  alone,  the  Opposi¬ 
tion  also,  stands  behind  the  Balfour  Declaration.  It 
was  the  pressure  of  the  Labour  Party,  quite  as  much 
as  the  pledges  of  the  government,  that  made  that 
declaration  a  part  of  the  law  of  nations  at  San  Remo. 
It  was  the  pressure  of  the  Labour  Party  most  of  all 
that  overcame  the  opposition  of  the  militarists  and  made 
Great  Britain  directly  responsible  for  the  fulfilment 
of  the  terms  of  the  declaration  by  demanding  the 
acceptance  of  the  mandate  for  Palestine  under  those 
terms.  The  Labour  Party,  from  the  time  that  it 
first  took  a  stand  on  the  objects  of  the  war* 1  to  the 
present  day,  has  been  staunchly  and  actively  sympa¬ 
thetic  to  the  Zionist  endeavour.  Its  first  step  in  support 

of  the  French  agent,  Cheradame.  Later,  the  announcement  made  by  the 
Republican  candidate  for  President,  Senator,  now  President  Harding,  of  a 
conference  with  a  French  emissary  regarding  the  League  of  Nations. 

lCf.  Statement  on  War  Aims. 


288  ZIONISM  AND  WORLD  POLITICS 


was  taken  not  without  hesitation.  Its  last  was  taken 
in  full  confidence.  It  was  taken  in  full  confidence 
because  it  saw  in  the  rebuilding  of  a  Jewish  homeland 
in  Palestine  an  opportunity  not  only  to  right  a  historic 
wrong,  but  to  try  out  within  the  limits  of  conscious  and 
technical  control  an  important  experiment  in  creative 
democracy;  because  it  regarded  the  Pittsburgh  Pro¬ 
gramme  of  the  American  Zionists  as  a  pledge  that  con¬ 
ditions  permitting  this  experiment  would  be1  con¬ 
scientiously  attempted.  It  knew  that  the  terms  of  this 
programme  were  written  into  the  draft  form  of  the 
mandate  presented  by  the  Zionists  to  the  British 
Government  for  consideration.  And  whether  the 
terms  are  accepted  by  the  British  Foreign  Office 
depends  largely,  again,  on  the  pressure  that  the  public 
opinion  of  Great  Britain  may  bring  to  bear.  For, 
although  the  mandate  is  issued,  its  terms  are  not  yet 
established,  and  whether  the  San  Remo  decision  may 
become  a  decision  in  fact  as  well  as  in  law,  whether  a 
Jewish  commonwealth  shall  ultimately  grow  up  in 
Palestine,  in  what  manner,  and  what  kind  of  common¬ 
wealth,  depends  to  a  very  large  degree  upon  the  terms 
of  the  mandate.  These  terms  are  in  Great  Britain  a 
domestic  issue  with  imperialistic  implications.  They 
may  become,  they  should  be,  if  the  Foreign  Office 
should  prefer  the  programme  of  the  militarists  to 
the  endeavour  of  the  Zionists,  an  item  in  the  struggle 
between  owners  and  workers  which  has  marked  the 
recent  domestic  history  of  Great  Britain. 

But  they  are  implied,  perhaps  even  more  fundamen¬ 
tally,  in  the  duel  of  empire.  For  the  economy  of 
Palestine,  the  number  of  people  it  can  support,  its 


xCf.  The  London  Daily  Herald,  March  25,  1920. 


“VITA  NUOVA?” 


289 


cultural  status  and  social  organization  must  depend 
very  largely  upon  the  degree  of  industrialization  it  can 
attain.  Industrialization  depends  on  power,  and  in 
Palestine  at  the  present  stage  of  technical  control  of 
power,  power  on  any  scale  can  be  nothing  except 
water-power,  and  water-power  is  a  matter  of  boun¬ 
daries,  particularly  of  the  northern  boundaries.  The 
whole  future  of  Palestine  is  in  the  hands  of  the  state 
which  controls  the  Litani,  the  Yarmuk,  and  the  head¬ 
waters  of  the  Jordan.  And  just  now  that  state  is 
imperialistic  France  to  whose  rulers  Palestine  is  a 
mere  pawn  in  their  imperialistic  game.  The  French 
Government  has,  according  to  occasion,  taken  con¬ 
flicting  attitudes  regarding  Palestine.  It  is  committed 
to  the  Balfour  Declaration  and  its  consequences. 
It  has  also  made  counter  commitments  to  the  Lebanon 
and  to  the  scattered  handful  of  pro-French  pan-Syrians. 
It  is,  however,  in  no  degree  much  concerned  with 
either.  Its  dispute  with  Britain  over  the  northern 
boundary  of  Palestine  is  an  item  less  pertinent  to  its 
Syrian  than  to  its  European  policy.  It  is  demanding 
the  letter  of  the  secret  and  repudiated  Sykes-Picot 
Treaty  and  the  full  measure  of  the  tripartite  agreement 
that  it  may  in  return  for  conceding  the  letter  receive 
a  substantial  concession  regarding  Russia  or  Germany 
or  central  Europe.  It  may  well  be  content  to  wreck 
Jewish  Palestine  if  it  can  thereby  gain  some  advantage 
for  the  international  finance  whose  headquarters  is  in 
France.  That,  in  the  tentative  agreements  regarding 
the  northern  boundary1  it  has  not  done  so,  is  to  its 

1The  agreement  concedes  to  the  Zionists  the  use  of  the  waters  of  the  upper 
Jordan  and  the  Yarmuk  under  an  arrangement  to  be  worked  out  by  French 
and  Zionist  technicians.  The  Zionists  desire  the  inclusion  of  the  Valley 
of  the  Yarmuk  and  the  headwaters  of  the  Jordan  under  the  British  mandate. 


290  ZIONISM  AND  WORLD  POLITICS 


credit,  but  is  to  be  associated  with  the  reparations 
conferences. 

Now,  however  the  boundary  disputes  will  be  deter¬ 
mined,  the  practical  question  for  the  Jews  is  clearly  the 
question,  not  of  present  advantage  with  the  powers 
that  be  but  of  harmony  in  the  long  run  with  the  trend 
of  life  in  Great  Britain  which  will  dominate  domestic 
activities  and  establish  ideals.  That  this  trend  is 
toward  industrial  democracy  need  not  be  argued: 
it  is  predestined,  and  only  the  destruction  of  industrial 
society  can  liberate  it  from  its  destiny.  A  vicious 
boundary  is  much  less  troublesome,  in  an  experiment 
like  Jewish  Palestine,  than  an  antipathetic  public 
opinion  in  the  country  whose  public  opinion  is  the  sole 
effective  sustaining  force  of  the  experiment.  The 
minds  of  the  present  active  officials  of  the  inter¬ 
national  Zion'st  organization  do  not,  however,  reveal 
any  adequacy  to  think  in  terms  of  the  long  run  here 
indicated.  By  background,  training,  aptitude,  and 
outlook  they  express  at  best  the  liberalism  and 
sentimentality  of  the  mid-Victorian  ideals  that  are 
the  mental  furniture  of  the  American  progressive. 
They  exhibit  an  obvious  taste  for  diplomacy,  and 
a  distinct  distaste,  particularly  in  England,  for  po¬ 
litical  and  economic  realism.  If  they  are  without 
the  fanatical  intransigence  of  the  Zeiri  Zionists  and 
the  Poale  Zionists  of  the  continent,  they  lack  also 
the  saving  cynicism  whose  absence  makes  diplo¬ 
macy  a  losing  game.  They  are  at  once  too  sincere 
for  diplomatic  guile,  and  too  wordly-wise  for  revo¬ 
lutionary  force.  In  a  word,  they  are  sentimentalists, 
and  they  are  sentimentalists  in  a  position  requir¬ 
ing  the  clearest  and  coldest  realization  of  specific 


“VITA  NUOVA?”  291 

living  trends — in  England  first  and  then  in  Asia 
Minor. 

II 

For  the  difficulty  that  attaches  to  the  political 
situation  in  England  attaches  in  like  manner  to  the 
whole  social  situation  in  Asia  Minor.  The  sentimental¬ 
ism  of  the  Jews — manifested  in  its  most  vicious  form 
in  the  conduct  of  the  business  of  the  Palestine  Com¬ 
mission  by  Menahem  Ussishkin  (a  conduct  which  re¬ 
pelled  the  English  and  angered  the  Arabs) — prevents 
the  clear  realization  of  the  conditions  that  must  de¬ 
termine  ethnographic  adjustment  not  only  between 
the  Jews  and  the  other  Palestinians,  but  between 
the  Jews  and  the  other  non-Turkish  peoples  of  Asia 
Minor.  Of  these  the  Arabic-speaking  peoples  constitute 
the  great  majority.  Tradition — truly  or  falsely,  does 
not  matter — declares  a  blood  relationship  to  exist 
between  them  and  the  Jews.  History,  far  more  ex¬ 
plicit  and  verifiable,  records  a  cultural  cooperation 
between  them,  lasting  through  the  Golden  Age  of 
Arab  civilization.  The  exigencies  of  imperialism  have 
imposed  upon  both  a  common  political  interest  in 
the  preservation  of  their  corporate  integrities.  Feisal, 
when  the  French  displayed  their  conception  of  the 
mandatory  principle  (under  which  the  mandates  are 
to  be  issued  with  the  consent  of  the  people  concerned), 
by  driving  him  out  of  Damascus  and  imposing  by  force 
their  overlordship  on  his  kingdom,  declared  that  his 
people  must  appeal  for  the  cooperation  of  the  Zionists. 
Similarly,  the  Jews  are  not  unlikely  to  find  that  the 
terms  of  the  mandate  which  the  imperialistic  and  mili¬ 
tary  clique  will  allow  are  such  as  will  facilitate  the 
complete  shift  of  the  base  of  defense  of  the  Suez  Canal 


292  ZIONISM  AND  WORLD  POLITICS 


from  Egypt  to  Palestine  and  the  security  of  the  Arab 
hinterland,  but  are  not  such  as  will  facilitate  the  swift 
and  adequate  development  of  Palestine  as  a  Jewish 
homeland.1  They  will  then  need  even  more  absolutely 
than  now  the  sympathy,  the  good-will,  and  the  coopera¬ 
tion  of  their  Arab  neighbours.  The  cultivation  of 
good  relations  with  the  Arabs  becomes  thus  the  fore¬ 
most  desideratum  of  a  realistic  Jewish  policy. 

Such  a  cultivation  can,  at  the  outset,  be  political 
only  in  one  respect.  That  respect  is,  however,  funda¬ 
mental  to  the  effective  foundation  of  a  new  interna¬ 
tional  order.  It  is  in  respect  of  the  mandatory  prin¬ 
ciple  laid  down  in  the  covenant  of  the  League  of  Na¬ 
tions  and  underwritten  by  very  nearly  all  the  civilized 
states  in  the  world.  Whether  this  principle  shall 


*A  draft  Mandate  for  Palestine  has  since  this  writing  been  laid  before 
the  Council  of  the  League  of  Nations.  So  far  as  the  Jews  are  concerned, 
it  does  nothing  more  than  repeat  and  amplify  the  indeterminate  formula 
of  the  Balfour  declaration:  to  the  mandatory,  on  the  other  hand,  it  assigns 
“all  the  powers  inherent  in  the  government  of  a  sovereign  state,”  including 
those  of  using  the  man-power,  facilities,  and  resources  of  the  land  for  military 
purposes,  and  completely  controlling  foreign  affairs.  It  commits  the  man¬ 
datory  to  the  development  of  Palestine  as  the  “Jewish  national  home”  what¬ 
ever  this  may  mean,  and  designates  the  Zionist  Organization  as  the  “Jewish 
Agency”  to  help  it  in  this  task,  so  long  as  this  agency’s  “organization  and 
constitution  are  in  the  opinion  of  the  mandatory  appropriate.  ”  It  permits 
the  Palestine  Administration  to  aid  in  the  immigration  of  Jews  to  Palestine 
and  their  admission  to  citizenship  there.  It  requires  the  administration 
to  introduce  “a  land  system  appropriate  to  the  needs  of  the  country”  and 
allows  it  “full  power  to  provide”  for  public  ownership  and  control  of  national 
resources,  “public  works,  services,  and  utilities,  and  permits  it  to  arrange 
with  the  Jewish  agency”  to  develop  or  establish  these  on  condition  that 
profits  shall  be  reasonable  and  excess  profits  shall  be  used  for  the  benefit 
of  the  land.  And  it  recognizes  Hebrew  as  an  official  language.  Its  whole 
effect,  so  far  as  it  concerns  the  Jews,  is  permissive  far  more  than  directive. 
Everything  regarding  them  comes  ultimately  to  depend  upon  the  good-will 
of  the  Administration,  not  upon  the  compulsions  of  fundamental  law.  The 
inferences  from  this  situation  are  obvious.  The  Arab  riots  in  Jaffa  on  May 
7,  1921,  are  a  commentary  on  it;  the  latest  exposition,  in  practically  iden¬ 
tical  terms,  by  both  Samuel  and  Churchill,  of  the  meaning  of  the  Balfour 
Declaration,  limiting  its  scope,  are  a  commentary  on  it.  Both  Jews  and 
Arabs  must  beware;  Jews,  particularly. 


“VITA  NUOVA?” 


293 


be  a  hypocritical  cloak  for  imperialistic  exploitation  or 
shall  be  carried  out  in  good  faith  depends  to-day  exclu¬ 
sively  upon  the  Jews  and  the  Arabs.  In  the  vindica¬ 
tion  of  the  mandatory  principle  they  have  absolutely 
a  common  cause  before  the  bar  of  international  justice. 

They  have  in  it  absolutely  a  common  enterprise 
toward  the  establishment  of  international  peace. 
For  the  mandatory  principle  contains  in  itself  the 
essential  repudiation  of  imperialism  and  all  its  works. 
In  the  degree  in  which  its  provisions  are  successfully 
enforced,  the  financial  exploitation  of  weaker  peoples 
and  the  military  collisions  therein  implicated  become 
impossible.  But  the  enforcement  of  the  mandatory 
principle  is  hardly  likely  to  arise  out  of  the  respect 
for  it  by  the  governments  at  present  holding  mandates. 
It  will  be  compelled  only  by  the  peoples  who  are  the 
subjects  of  the  mandates,  and  of  these  peoples  alone 
the  Jews  and  Arabs  have  the  competency  to  exact 
the  attention  and  secure  the  support  of  the  enlightened 
public  opinion  of  the  world.  There  is  thus  in  the 
international  position  created  for  the  Jews  by  the 
Treaty  of  San  Remo  and  in  the  Arab  connection  some¬ 
thing  that  the  religious-minded  would  no  doubt  call 
predestination — the  predestination  of  making  real 
in  some  sense  the  prophecy  of  Isaiah  that  the  law 
shall  go  forth  from  Jerusalem  and  the  word  of  the  Lord 
from  Zion  to  the  effect  that  men  shall  beat  their  swords 
into  plowshares  and  their  spears  into  pruning-hooks, 
that  nation  shall  not  lift  up  the  sword  against  nation 
nor  learn  war  any  more. 

Such  a  culmination,  obtained  so  far  as  may  be 
through  the  enforcement  of  the  mandatory  principle, 
is  no  doubt  a  matter  first  of  the  effective  confirmation 


294  ZIONISM  AND  WORLD  POLITICS 


of  the  principle  and  then  of  the  slow  accumulation 
of  precedents  and  the  establishment  of  habits  which 
would  foreclose  such  default  by  mandatory  powers 
as  cannot  in  the  nature  of  things  fail  to  be  attempted. 
Meanwhile,  the  validation  of  this  common  cause  of 
Arab  and  Jew  must  rest  upon  a  unity  far  more  com¬ 
petent  than  merely  common  action  under  the  covenant 
of  the  League  of  Nations.  It  requires  a  unity  estab¬ 
lished  through  a  meeting  of  minds,  an  interchange 
of  intellectual  culture,  a  cooperation  in  the  public 
enterprises  necessary  to  the  smooth  going  and  the 
progressive  enrichment  of  the  daily  life  of  the  two 
peoples.  The  Jews  cannot  too  soon  create  in  their 
University  a  Department  of  Arabic  Life  and  Letters. 
They  cannot  too  soon  open  all  their  schools,  from  the 
highest  to  the  lowest,  to  the  Arabs  at  home  and  abroad, 
and  invite  reciprocity.  As  Feisal  has  repeatedly 
pointed  out,  cultural  communion  must  be  coupled 
with  economic  cooperation,  and  the  building  up  of 
Palestine  must  be  accompanied  by  the  development 
of  Syria  and  Mesopotamia.  The  need  is  particularly 
great  to  raise  the  standard  of  living  of  the  Palestin¬ 
ian  fellah.  Already  the  mere  existence  of  the  Jewish 
colonies,  poor  as  they  are,  has  done  much  for  his  wages 
and  his  health — this  is  one  of  the  reasons  for  the  ani¬ 
mus  of  the  effendi  and  the  money-lender  against  Zionism. 
But  there  is  still  much  to  do.  The  fellah  must  be 
completely  freed  from  the  exploitation  of  the  landlord 
and  the  usurer,  and  must  receive  the  maximum  op¬ 
portunity  for  education  in  the  Jewish  schools  and  for 
the  absorption  of  Jewish  standards  of  life,  labour,  and 
thought.  That  this  must  be  accomplished  not  by 
coercion  but  by  contagion  is,  of  course,  obvious. 


“VITA  NUOVA?” 


295 


The  fellah  of  Palestine  is  a  case  of  the  arrested  develop¬ 
ment  and  enforced  degradation  typical  of  the  whole 
Arabic-speaking  and  Mohammedan  world.  The  cul¬ 
tural  level  on  which  he  has  found  stability  is  barbarous. 
His  rise  above  it  is  restricted  by  the  accumulations  of 
immemorial  precepts,  prescriptions,  and  taboos  which 
even  in  the  Bible  appear  in  already  vestigial  form. 
From  these  he  will  need  to  be  moved  by  attraction, 
not  impulsion.  With  the  Jewish  avenues  toward 
culture  and  occidentalism  open,  with  no  constraints 
from  without,  and  particularly  with  the  example 
of  Jewish  success  and  prosperity  before  his  eyes, 
he  will,  in  the  course  of  time,  of  his  own  motion  seek 
a  status  wherein  he  will  help  to  elevate,  as  he  now  de¬ 
grades,  the  standards  and  conditions  of  life  of  his 
European  Jewish  neighbour. 

The  ultimate  outcome  of  such  a  process  is,  willy- 
nilly,  likely  to  be,  within  Palestine,  the  assimilation 
to  one  another  of  Jew  and  Arab,  and  on  the  European 
level  of  life  and  culture;  outside  of  Palestine,  the  realiza¬ 
tion  of  that  confederation  of  the  peoples  of  Asia  Minor 
which  Sir  Mark  Sykes  dreamed  of,  and  to  which  his 
unfortunate  arrangement  with  Picot  is  to-day  the 
most  serious  obstacle. 


Ill 

If  the  political  situation  has  its  ethnographic  im¬ 
plications  and  the  ethnographic  relations  carry  their 
political  responsibilities,  involving  a  condition  and 
requiring  a  will  to  make  effective  the  prophetic  vision 
of  international  peace;  so  also  the  economic  situation, 
which  underlies  both  the  others,  has  its  implications. 
These  involve  a  condition  requiring  a  will  to  make 


296  ZIONISM  AND  WORLD  POLITICS 


effective  the  prophetic  vision  of  national  righteousness. 

The  struggle  to  establish  this  righteousness  seems 
to  be  the  outstanding  fact  of  the  internal  history  of 
the  ancient  Jewish  state.  One  of  the  most  interest¬ 
ing  things  about  the  literature  of  that  state  is  the  ab¬ 
sence  of  political  writings.  In  other  ancient  states — 
the  Athenian,  for  example — political  form  seems  to  be 
a  paramount  concern.  With  Plato  and  Aristotle,  the 
political  organization  of  the  state  is  the  outstanding 
preoccupation  and  their  successors  are  legion.  Ancient 
Hebrew  literature  seems  to  ignore  altogether  political 
forms.  It  seems  to  take  them  for  granted,  and  the 
changes  in  Hebrew  government  seem  to  be  changes  neces¬ 
sitated  by  foreign,  not  by  domestic,  problems.  The 
subject  matter  of  the  Prophets,  of  the  two  books  of  law, 
Leviticus  and  Deuteronomy,  is  the  economy  of  the  state. 

The  history  of  this  economy  can  be  summed  up  very 
briefly.  When  the  Jews  slowly  conquered  Canaan, 
the  unit  of  military  action  was  the  tribe,  and  the  land 
that  was  conquered  became  the  property  of  the  tribe 
as  a  whole.  When  it  was  distributed,  the  tribe  re¬ 
ceived  it  first.  Thus,  Joshua  distributes  so  much  land 
to  this  tribe,  so  much  to  that  tribe,  and  so  on.  The  land 
went  first  into  the  possession  of  the  tribal  community. 
Then  the  community  distributed  it  to  the  clans  and 
families,  and  from  these  it  could  not  be  alienated 
except  as  subject  to  the  right  of  preemption  by  the 
next  of  kin.  Transfer  to  persons  outside  the  clan  was 
not  permitted.  Nor,  as  is  told  in  Numbers,  could  land 
be  transferred  from  one  tribe  to  another.  At  the 
outset,  then,  the  land  was  divided  among  the  families 
and  each  cultivated  its  own  vine  and  fig-tree. 

A  process  of  subversion  which  seems  to  be  universal 


“VITA  NUOVA?” 


297 


and  endemic  and  as  persistent  as  what  is  called  natural 
law — it  may  be  observed  to-day  in  Texas  even  as 
then  in  Palestine  or  Greece — deprived  the  peasant 
freeholder  first  of  his  land,  then  perhaps  of  his  children, 
his  wife,  and,  finally,  his  freedom.  In  the  next  stage 
the  community  is,  broadly  speaking,  a  community 
of  landowners  on  the  one  side  and  serfs  and  slaves  who 
till  the  land  of  the  landowners  on  the  other.  All  the 
prophets,  from  Amos  to  Isaiah,  are  engaged  in  denounc¬ 
ing  both  the  process  and  the  condition.  They  are 
engaged  in  denouncing  the  whole  system  of  inequalities 
that  it  developed,  and  their  reforms  are  reforms  which 
look  primarily  toward  eliminating  it  and  preventing 
its  recurrence  in  the  future.  Deuteronomy  is  the 
first  step  taken  toward  this  end,  Leviticus  the  second. 
Between  Deuteronomy  and  Leviticus  came  the  Babylo¬ 
nian  exile,  and  it  is  not  improbable  that  the  exiles’ 
observation  of  land  tenure  and  slavery  in  Babylon, 
no  less  than  of  religious  ritual,  had  its  influence  on 
the  drastic  reconstruction  formulated  in  the  Levitical 
code.  The  heart  of  this  code  is  the  conception  that 
the  land  belongs  to  the  community  as  a  whole  and 
the  ordination  of  an  economy  based  on  this  conception. 
Under  this  economy  land  may  be  leased  but  not  sold. 
The  lease  may  be  determined  by  the  value  not  of  the 
land,  but  of  the  crops  prior  to  the  year  of  jubilee. 
And  if  the  original  holder  wishes  to  reclaim  his  land, 
he  may  do  so,  refunding  the  price.  In  the  forty-ninth 
year  land  must  be  returned  to  him  whether  or  no. 
Houses  must  be  treated  like  land. 

Similarly  with  respect  to  the  tools  of  the  labourer, 
his  clothing,  food,  and  so  forth.  Both  Deuteronomy 
and  Leviticus  prohibit  taking  them  as  pledges.  So 


298  ZIONISM  AND  WORLD  POLITICS 


also  with  interest:  it  may  not  be  taken  from  citizens, 
although  it  may  from  aliens. 

The  attempt  is  obviously  to  safeguard  the  lives  and 
liberties  of  men  against  the  menace  involved  in  private 
ownership  or  control  of  natural  resources,  of  the  tools 
and  instruments  of  their  trades,  and  in  financial  ex¬ 
ploitation.  This  is  to-day  familiar  doctrine,  and  it  is 
all  that  is  substantial  in  the  “righteousness”  which 
the  prophets  imposed  as  the  conditions  of  private  and 
public  security. 

Deuteronomy  and  Leviticus  reveal  the  pattern  of 
the  problem  which  the  prophets  anciently  faced 
and  the  solutions  which  the  prophets  found.  They 
have  apparently  set  the  standard  for  all  time.  Hardly 
any  of  the  proposals  of  contemporary  Utopians  and 
thinkers,  no  matter  how  radical  or  how  temporizingly 
statesmanlike,  do  more  than  envisage  the  same  es¬ 
sential  confrontations,  and  propound,  in  varying 
degrees,  the  same  essential  solutions.  Modernly,  how¬ 
ever,  the  anatomy  of  the  situation  has  been  compli¬ 
cated  by  the  addition  of  the  automatic  machine.  The 
machine  has  added  to  the  problem  new  factors  and 
to  its  solution  new  elements.  The  difference  between 
the  tasks  of  Nehemiah  and  Samuel  may  turn  on  noth¬ 
ing  else  beside. 

Now  the  effect  of  the  automatic  machine  on  the 
problem  of  livelihood  in  Palestine  is  to  render  impossi¬ 
ble  there  economic  self-sufficiency  and  a  merely  agricul¬ 
tural  economy.  Even  the  mass  of  the  fellah,  whose 
margin  of  sustenance  is  barely  above  the  starvation 
point,  have  felt  the  influence  of  the  machine  and  have 
become  dependent  on  outside  for  necessaries  such  as 
clothing,  and  more  often  than  not,  for  food.  The 


“VITA  NUOVA?” 


299 


Jews,  with  a  much  higher  standard  of  living,  even 
among  the  poorest  of  them,  have  so  far  not  succeeded 
in  establishing  themselves  in  a  merely  agricultural — 
and  so  primitively  agricultural! — Palestine.  If  Pales¬ 
tine  is  to  become  a  Jewish  commonwealth,  hence, 
its  agriculture  will  have  to  be  industrialized  at  least 
to  the  degree  in  which  it  is  industrialized  in  the  United 
States,  and  in  addition  it  will  need  to  develop  an  in¬ 
dustrial  economy — particularly,  perhaps,  in  terms  of 
textiles — that  can  quickly  absorb,  employ,  and  support 
a  large  Jewish  immigration. 

But  wherever  industry  has  come,  there  have  come 
radical  modifications  in  the  structure  of  society  and 
a  clash  of  interests — not,  as  we  shall  see,  necessary — 
usually  called  the  class  war.  New  social  formations 
have  come  into  existence — banks,  trusts,  labour  unions, 
regulative  commissions,  and  so  on.  The  country  has 
been  put  at  the  mercy  of  the  city  and  the  farmer  of 
the  miller,  the  commission  merchant  and  the  banker. 
Thus,  in  the  United  States  the  clash  between  industrial 
worker  and  owner,  taking  form  as  the  “labour” 
problem,  is  paralleled  by  the  clash  between  producer 
and  distributor,  taking  form  in  the  “problem”  of 
the  Non-Partisan  League.  Similar  situations  are  to  be 
found  everywhere.  It  is  clear  that  nothing  but  ad¬ 
vantage  could  accrue  to  Jewish  Palestine  if  these 
situations  could  be  averted  from  the  outset.  For  the 
problem  of  constructing  the  Jewish  commonwealth 
is  already  very  complex  and  difficult.  The  mass  of 
the  new  settlers  will  come  from  central  and  eastern 
Europe.  That  means  that  they  will  not  be  either 
emotionally  or  physically  the  stuff  that  pioneers  are 
ordinarily  made  of:  the  Poles  and  Ukrainians  and  the 


300  ZIONISM  AND  WORLD  POLITICS 


Hungarians  and  Rumanians  have  seen  to  that.  Their 
organization,  instruction,  and  activities  will  need  to  be 
such  as  will  enable  them  to  recover  in  the  shortest 
possible  time  health,  hope,  and  self-dependence,  to  evoke 
their  initiative  and  to  encourage  them  in  the  emulations 
of  work;  a  morale  will  have  to  be  created  for  them;  and 
this  in  the  presence  and  against  the  contagion  of  the 
lower  economy  and  hope  of  the  Arabs.  To  permit 
the  complication  of  this  problem  by  the  addition  of  an 
unnecessary  and  dangerous  “labour”  problem  would 
be  the  height  of  folly.  Yet,  since  inertia,  sentiment, 
and  prejudice  govern  men  more  than  either  insight  or 
hindsight  one  may  not  doubt  that  the  height  will  be 
attained. 


IV 

Nevertheless,  an  attempt  has  been  made  to  keep  the 
development  of  Palestine  on  the  plains  of  commonsense. 
This  attempt  is  the  Pittsburgh  Programme.  Its 
origin  is  to  be  sought  in  a  series  of  discussions  which 
began  between  some  of  the  members  of  a  small  group 
of  American  Zionists  calling  themselves  “Parushim,” 
shortly  after  the  publication  of  Mr.  Balfour’s  letter 
to  Lord  Rothschild.  The  eight  or  nine  men  and  women 
who  participated  in  the  discussion  were  of  all  shades 
of  opinion  and  of  all  schools  in  economic  thought.  By 
common  consent  they  determined  to  leave  doctrine 
as  nearly  as  possible  to  the  doctrinaries  and  to  face 
the  problem  of  the  economy  of  Palestine  developing 
into  a  free  Jewish  commonwealth  in  terms  of  the  con¬ 
ditions  which  such  a  development  must  meet  and  must 
overcome.  The  upshot  was  the  agreement  upon  a 
set  of  principles  which  they  bound  themselves,  each 


“VITA  NUOVA?” 


301 


in  his  own  way,  to  teach  and  defend.  These  principles 
in  a  modified  form  were  unanimously  adopted  by  the 
convention  of  the  Zionist  Organization  of  America  in 
July,  1918,  under  the  title  “Resolutions  Bearing  on 
Palestinian  Policy,”  and  reaffirmed  at  subsequent 
conventions.  The  formulation  of  these  resolutions 
was  the  work  of  one  member  of  the  group.  The 
modifications  were  due  to  the  criticisms  of  the  best 
minds  of  the  organization,  including  Mr.  Brandeis. 
The  resolutions  declare: 

In  1897  the  first  Zionist  Congress  at  Basle  defined  the 
object  of  Zionism  to  be  “the  establishment  of  a  publicly 
recognized  and  legally  secured  homeland  for  the  Jewish 
people  in  Palestine.”  The  recent  Declaration  of  Great 
Britain,  France,  Italy,  and  others  of  the  allied  democratic 
states  have  established  this  public  recognition  of  the  Jewish 
national  home  as  an  international  fact. 

Therefore  we  desire  to  affirm  anew  the  principles  which 
have  guided  the  Zionist  Movement  since  its  inception,  and 
which  were  the  foundations  laid  down  by  our  lawgivers  and 
prophets  for  the  ancient  Jewish  state,  and  were  the  inspira¬ 
tion  of  the  living  Jewish  law  embodied  in  the  traditions  of 
two  thousand  years  of  exile. 

1st.  Political  and  civil  equality  irrespective  of  race, 
sex,  or  faith,  for  all  the  inhabitants  of  the  land. 

2nd.  To  insure  in  the  Jewish  national  home  in  Palestine 
equality  of  opportunity,  we  favour  a  policy  which  with  due 
regard  to  existing  rights  shall  tend  to  establish  the  ownership 
and  control  of  the  land  and  of  all  natural  resources,  and  of 
all  public  utilities  by  the  whole  people. 

3rd.  All  land,  owned  or  controlled  by  the  whole  people, 
should  be  leased  on  such  conditions  as  will  insure  the  fullest 
opportunity  for  development  and  continuity  of  possession. 

4th.  The  cooperative  principle  should  be  applied  as  far 
as  feasible  in  the  organization  of  all  agricultural,  industrial, 
commercial,  and  financial  undertakings. 


302  ZIONISM  AND  WORLD  POLITICS 


5th.  The  fiscal  policy  shall  be  framed  so  as  to  protect 
the  people  from  the  evils  of  land  speculation  and  from 
every  other  form  of  financial  oppression. 

6th.  The  system  of  free  public  instruction  which  is  to  be 
established  should  embrace  all  grades  and  departments  of 
education. 

7th.  The  medium  of  public  instruction  shall  be  Hebrew, 
the  national  language  of  the  Jewish  people. 

V 

The  discussion  of  which  these  principles  are  a 
precipitate  were  inevitably  wide-ranging,  and  inevita¬ 
bly  entailed  not  merely  a  reversion  to  economic  theories 
and  programmes,  but  an  analysis  of  political  and  cul¬ 
tural  ideologies.  As  they  went  on  and  agreement  came 
closer,  they  tended  to  take  shape  as  an  attitude  of 
mind  which  involved  a  practical  criticism  and  restate¬ 
ment  of  the  postulates  or  preconceptions  of  current 
economic  theories,  whatever  their  schools.  It  was 
observed  that  these  theories  arose  as  attempts  at 
justifying  or  correcting  special  economic  situations, 
and  that  the  theories  were  challenged,  opposed,  and 
finally  displaced  as  the  situations  altered.  There 
were  reviewed  and  rejected  as  inapplicable,  both 
generally  to  the  whole  region  of  economic  life,  and 
particularly  to  Palestine,  the  assumptions  of  the 
classical  orthodox  economists,  of  the  Socialists,  of  the 
syndicalists,  and  of  the  anarchists.  All  these  seemed 
to  have  arisen  as  responses  to  secondary  rather  than 
primary  conditions,  and  to  have  undergone  distortion 
in  the  degree  that  these  primary  conditions  were  lost 
sight  of. 

In  Palestine,  however,  an  undeveloped  and  backward 
land,  the  primary  conditions  wTere  in  no  way  overlaid. 


“VITA  NUOVA?” 


303 


For  all  practical  purposes,  no  economy  existed  in 
Jewish  Palestine,  only  a  charity.  An  economy  was 
to  be  created,  and  it  was  to  be  created  by  bringing 
together  people  of  a  certain  character  and  vision,  of 
certain  habits  of  mind  and  work  with  a  territory 
where  even  the  soil  would  require  special  treatment 
before  it  could  begin  to  support  them.  The  attempt 
to  envisage  what  they  must  get  and  what  they  must 
make  led  ultimately  to  an  anatomy  of  the  economic 
interests  and  functions  of  men,  and  this  to  certain 
premises  which,  commonplace  as  they  seemed,  struck 
many  of  that  sophisticated  company  as  the  beginnings 
of  a  restatement  of  economic  theory,  having  possibilities 
of  much  wider  relevance  than  Palestine. 

The  point  of  departure  for  these  premises  was  the 
observation  that  consumers  and  producers,  even  more 
than  buyers  and  sellers,  come  at  a  certain  level  into 
inevitable  conflict  with  each  other.  This  conflict,  so 
the  argument  ran,  is  more  widespread  and  more  funda¬ 
mental  than  the  Socialist’s  class  war,  inasmuch  as 
the  latter  obtains  only  between  different  classes  of 
producers  in  the  same  field  of  endeavour,  while  the 
former  is  coextensive  with  mankind  and  obtains  in  the 
heart  of  each  and  every  human  being.  To  the  question 
why  the  conflict  was  thus  universal,  the  answer  was 
made  that  men  are  born  consumers  and  only  become 
producers.  Had  the  world  been  one  that  was  made 
for  them,  instead  of  one  in  which  they  happen  and 
grow,  men  would  have  been  consumers  purely.  The 
world  being  what  it  is,  they  have  to  make  it  over  to 
prepare  it  for  consumption.  Thereby  the  whole  com¬ 
plicated  economy  of  industrial  society  comes  to  be  in 
which  the  ultimate  end  of  production — use,  consumption 


304  ZIONISM  AND  WORLD  POLITICS 


— gets  displaced  by  the  proximate  end,  marketing, 
profit;  things  get  made,  like  the  razors  bought  by  the 
Vicar  of  Wakefield’s  son  at  the  fair,  not  for  use,  but 
usury;  not  to  serve  but  to  sell.  And  even  where  use 
is  held  in  view,  the  conflict  is  apparent.  A  baker 
wants  to  buy  the  flour  and  eggs  and  yeast  and  housing 
which  he  consumes  as  cheaply  as  possible  and  wants 
to  sell  his  bread  as  dearly  as  possible.  His  customers, 
who  may  be  the  very  people  from  whom  he  buys  these 
things,  want  their  bread  as  cheaply  as  possible,  but 
tend  to  charge  their  own  patrons  all  that  the  traffic  will 
bear. 

Nor  is  this  the  whole  story,  nor  its  most  impor¬ 
tant  phase.  The  butcher,  the  baker,  the  candlestick- 
maker  each  produces  one  thing  only,  but  each  consumes 
many  things,  very  many  things,  that  he  does  not  pro¬ 
duce  and  that  he  cannot  produce;  that,  consequently, 
other  people  must  produce  for  him.  His  interests  as 
consumer  have  a  much  wider  range  and  span  than  his 
interests  as  producer.  His  conflict  with  all  other  people 
as  producer  is  due  to  the  fact  that  his  consumer’s  in¬ 
terest  can  be  served  only  if  he  receives  a  return  for 
what  he  produces  adequate  to  yield  him  the  satisfac¬ 
tions  he  craves.  His  returns  on  his  production  are  a 
rough  measure  of  the  effective  range  of  his  consump¬ 
tion,  and  the  completeness  of  his  satisfactions. 

Now  there  comes  a  point  in  consumption  when  the 
value  begins  to  fall  off.  Consumption,  no  less  than 
production,  has  its  law  of  diminishing  returns,  con¬ 
fusedly  treated  by  economists  as  “diminishing  utility.” 
In  production,  however,  the  law  of  diminishing  returns 
applies  only  to  profits.  Where  profits  are  not  involved 
production  may  go  on  indefinitely;  but  consumption 


“VITA  NUOVA?” 


305 


stops  where  the  point  of  gratification  is  passed.  The 
principle  of  diminishing  returns  in  consumption  makes 
the  rich  man  poor  and  turns  the  so-called  law  of  supply 
and  demand  into  a  business  man’s  myth.  For  the 
law  confuses  consuming  power  with  purchasing  power, 
and  assumes  that  demand  has  been  satisfied  when 
people  have  stopped  buying.  But  for  the  basic 
products  of  industrial  society — food,  clothing,  shelter, 
protection  against  danger  and  disease — social  demand, 
consuming  power,  is  insatiable,  and  purchasing  power 
limited.  From  the  point  of  view  of  society,  supply 
can  be  exhausted  by  consuming  power,  and  can  and 
often  does  exhaust  purchasing  power,  as  the  economy 
of  the  war  and  the  current  economic  crises  clearly 
enough  show. 

With  individuals  the  reverse  may  be  the  case.  A 
dyspeptic  millionaire  may  have  endless  purchasing 
power  and  yet  be  practically  bankrupt  in  consum¬ 
ing  power;  the  threshold  at  which  his  satisfaction 
stops  may  be  very  low,  and  the  number  and  vari¬ 
ety  of  his  satisfactions  may  be  very  small.  Indeed, 
the  whole  difference  between  a  barbarian  and  a  man 
of  culture  may  be  said  to  lie  in  these  things.  The 
production  power  and  skill  of  each  in  his  own  sphere 
may  be  equal;  that  of  the  former  may  even  exceed 
that  of  the  latter.  But  the  latter’s  capacity  for  con¬ 
sumption  is  enormously  extended.  The  barbarian 
is  able  to  consume  only  the  merest  necessities;  the 
other  requires  not  alone  what  the  barbarian  requires 
but  a  great  many  more  things  which  are  to  him  equally 
necessities.  Civilization  may  be  defined,  in  fact,  as 
the  multiplication  of  the  necessities  of  life.  A  standard 
of  living  is  high  or  low  by  just  what  it  accepts  and  what 


306  ZIONISM  AND  WORLD  POLITICS 


it  rejects  as  necessary.  And  the  standard  of  living  is 
the  preoccupation  of  consumption.  Currently,  it  has 
been  measured  by  two  conditions — that  of  health, 
and  that  of  morale.  By  the  latter  it  was  agreed  to  mean 
the  diversity  and  coherence  of  consumption  interests 
in  a  common  purpose  that  may  express  the  identity 
and  continuity  of  a  human  group.  Thus  the  country 
is  being  deserted  and  country  life  is  a  problem;  towns 
are  growing  in  number  and  complexity  because  they 
present  the  concentration  of  a  greater  diversity  of 
satisfactions.  The  movement  of  population  from 
country  to  city  is  a  consumers’  movement,  not  a  pro¬ 
ducers’.  City  has  more  articulation,  is  more  shot 
through  with  spiritual  values,  its  morale  is  higher. 

The  reason  is  that  the  city  is  essentially  a  centre 
and  organization  of  consumption.  Consumption  is  the 
end  or  goal  of  life;  production  is  either  an  instru¬ 
ment  and  servant  of  consumption  or  is  identical  with 
consumption.  In  the  latter  case  the  activities  which 
men  undertake  are  free  activities,  and  their  nature 
is  that  of  art  or  science  or  play.  They  do  not  merely 
use  material,  they  use  it  up.  They  are  recreational 
in  both  senses  of  the  word,  and  the  associations  of 
men  who  pursue  them  tend  to  be  free  associations  with 
professional  standards  of  workmanship  and  conduct. 
But  the  bulk  of  the  productive  activities  in  the  economy 
of  life  are  not  free  but  bond,  not  recreational  but  ex¬ 
hausting.  They  constitute,  and  always  must  consti¬ 
tute,  labour,  not  art.  For,  by  and  large,  there  is  no 
liberative  quality  in  them.  They  are  things  men  do 
because  they  must,  not  because  they  want  to. 

And  the  things  men  do  because  they  must  are,  on  the 
whole,  the  things  which  in  economic  life  diversify  them; 


“VITA  NUOVA?’’ 


S07 


the  things  men  do  because  they  want  to  are  the  things 
which  unite  them.  Men  are  by  nature  in  need  of  food, 
clothing,  shelter,  recreation,  medicine;  they  are  not 
by  nature  farmers  or  machinists  or  bakers  or  physicians 
or  weavers  or  carpenters  or  printers.  Their  consuming 
interests  are  innate;  their  producing  interests  are 
acquired.  As  consumers  men  are,  by  and  large,  simi¬ 
lar  and  equal.  As  producers  they  are,  by  and  large, 
diversified  and  unequal. 

In  all  societies  which  have  attained  a  certain  level 
of  organization,  the  similarities  become  the  basis  of 
competition  and  conflict.  Wanting  the  same  things, 
when  there  are  not  enough  to  go  round,  as  when 
consumers  want  bread  and  meat,  or  producers  want 
patrons,  seems  to  be  the  source  of  all  wars,  whether 
economic  or  political.  Baker  competes  with  baker, 
not  with  carpenter;  shoemaker  competes  with  shoe¬ 
maker,  not  with  butcher;  and  so  on.  Insofar  as  men 
are  diverse,  individual  not  merely  in  their  vocations, 
but  in  their  natures;  they  need  one  another,  are  inter¬ 
dependent  and  cooperative;  insofar  as  they  are  simi¬ 
lar,  they  tend  to  be  competitors.  That  diversification 
of  producers  known  as  the  division  of  labour  together 
with  the  later  organization  of  the  diversified  pro¬ 
ducers  into  guilds,  trusts,  trade-unions,  and  so  on 
seems  in  the  history  of  the  industrial  arts  to  have  been 
conditioned  upon  the  similarity  of  consumers;  com¬ 
petition  for  custom  was  obviated  by  the  differentia¬ 
tion  of  services.  By  means  of  this  diversification  and 
the  subsequent  integration  of  individuals  of  similar 
vocation  into  vocational  groups,  producers  appear  to 
have  obtained  an  absolute  advantage  over  the  “  ulti¬ 
mate’ ’  consumer,  an  advantage  tremendously  increased 


308  ZIONISM  AND  WORLD  POLITICS 


through  the  development  of  the  economy  of  in¬ 
dustry. 

The  consumers’  counter  of  this  advantage  has  been 
consumers’  cooperation.  It  is  a  form  of  organization 
and  involves  an  ideology  which  appears  later  in  the 
history  of  economic  associations  than  producers’ 
unions.  It  rests  upon  the  natural  and  moral  priority 
of  consumption  over  production,  and  converts  the 
consumers’  similarity  and  equality  from  a  competitive 
to  a  cooperative  trend.  It  does  so,  moreover,  under  the 
Rochdale  plan,  without  denying  gratification  to  the 
competitive  interest,  since  members  of  the  system 
buy  at  cost,  yet  with  a  profit,  really  a  saving,  propor¬ 
tional  to  their  purchases.  Its  development  has  been 
a  movement  from  distribution  by  consumers  for  con¬ 
sumers  to  production  by  consumers  for  consumers. 
Never  in  its  history  has  it  failed  to  maintain  the  priority 
of  consumption  over  production,  and  to  extend  the 
operation  of  this  priority  over  greater  and  greater 
areas  of  social  life.1 

Producer’s  cooperatives,  both  in  agriculture  and  in 
industry,  do  not  take  their  point  of  departure  from 
the  common  human  interest  of  the  consumer  as  such 
in  conflict  with  the  specialized  interests  of  different 
crafts  and  trades  and  industries  of  producers.  They 
take  their  point  of  departure  from  the  class  war  among 
producers,  and  the  difficulties  that  exist  among  them 
and  that  are  involved  in  their  theories  are  due  to  the 
biases  caused  by  this  origin.  This  makes  them  aim 
at  the  establishment  of  what  is  only  a  social  means 

1  Cf.  George  Jacob  Holyoake.  “ The  History  of  Cooperation  in  England”; 
“The  History  of  the  Rochdale  Pioneers”;  L.  Smith-Gordon  and  C.  O’Brien: 
“Cooperation  in  Many  Lands”;  Albert  Sonnischsen :  “Consumer’s  Coopera¬ 
tion,” 


“VITA  NUOVA?” 


309 


in  the  position  of  the  social  end — which  is  consumption 
— through  the  conversion  of  the  tools  and  the  materials 
of  production  in  any  craft  or  trade  or  industry  into 
the  property  of  all  the  members  of  the  craft,  or  trade 
or  industry.  They  hypostatize  the  instrument,1  aiming 
thus  at  the  same  kind  of  control  of  the  consuming 
public  that  the  capitalist  has,  minus  the  class  war  which 
troubles  the  power  of  the  capitalist. 

To  avoid  the  menace  in  such  a  control,  to  obviate 
the  inevitable  conflict  between  different  cooperative 
producers’  unions  such  as  would  obtain  under  syndical¬ 
ism,  and  yet  to  make  impossible  the  servile  state  which 
is  the  constant  menace  of  socialism,  the  ownership  of 
land,  of  the  resources  drawn  from  the  land,  of  the 
tools  and  agencies  of  production,  would  obviously  need 
to  be  vested  in  the  consumers  as  consumers.  In  prac¬ 
tice  this  would  mean  that  all  the  inhabitants  of  a 
land  would  be  voluntarily  associated  together,  in  a 
consumers’  cooperative  society,  having  a  federal 
structure,  and  holding  title  to  the  land,  the  natural 
resources,  and  the  machinery  by  which  these  are  con¬ 
verted  into  consumable  commodities  and  services  and 
the  various  wants  of  men  are  satisfied.  Such  an  organ¬ 
ization  would  guarantee  to  all  the  inhabitants  of  the 
land  that  usujruct  which  ownership  under  the  system 
of  private,  personal  property  in  these  things  guarantees 
to  only  a  few.  The  priority  of  consumption  would  thus 
be  confirmed  in  organization  and  in  law. 

But  if  the  pattern  of  economic  control  were  limited 
to  this  feature,  the  essential  abuses  of  the  modern 
industrial  system  in  which  the  class  war  has  its  ground 
would  be  neither  avoided  nor  obviated.  The  producer 


1Cf.  H.  M.  Kallen:  “William  James  and  Henri  Bergson,”  Chapter  I. 


310  ZIONISM  AND  WORLD  POLITICS 


in  any  industry  would  be  a  wage-earner  and  at  the 
mercy  of  his  employer — in  effect,  of  the  management 
of  the  industry.  That  he  would,  as  a  member  of  the 
National  Consumers’  Cooperative  society,  be  to  some 
degree  owner  as  well  as  worker  would  make  no  prac¬ 
tical  difference,  for  his  property  right  would  be  too 
small — as  is  the  case  with  employees  in  English  and 
other  cooperatives — to  modify  his  status  of  employee. 
If  he  is  to  get  justice  as  a  worker  there  must  be  assured 
to  him  exactly  the  type  of  freedom  that  the  producer 
seeks  by  means  of  the  Producers’  Cooperative.  It 
must,  however,  be  assured  to  him  not  as  against  the 
consumer’s  interest  but  in  reconciliation  with  it,  in 
due  acknowledgment  of  the  priority  of  the  consumer’s 
end.  This  aim  can  be  attained  by  the  organization 
of  producers  according  to  their  different  trades,  crafts, 
vocations,  or  professions — i.  e.,  as  agricultural  labourers, 
carpenters,  machinists,  transport-workers,  physicians, 
teachers,  bankers,  and  so  on.  These  organizations 
would,  in  matters  of  their  several  technologies,  of  the 
conditions  of  production,  be  self-governed  and  autono¬ 
mous.  They  would  be  endowed  with  ownership  of  use 
in  contrast  to  the  ownership  of  usufruct,  on  the  basis 
of  their  functions  as  producers.  Every  member  of  a 
producing  cooperative  would  be  an  owner  in  the  process 
of  production,  would  be  a  member  in  a  free  coopera¬ 
tive  company  in  which  the  less  skilled  would  have  a 
voice  with  the  more  skilled  in  the  government  of  their  in¬ 
dustry  as  an  organization  of  productive  activities.  The 
various  associations  producing  commodities  or  services 
would  then  be  federated  into  a  single  society,  constitut¬ 
ing  a  National  Producers’  Cooperative. 

Thus,  each  citizen  of  the  land  would  enter  twice  into 


“VITA  NUOVA?” 


811 


economic  association  with  his  fellows.  Once,  as  con¬ 
sumer,  with  all  his  fellows;  once  as  producer  with  the 
members  only  of  his  craft,  industry,  or  profession.  The 
duly-chosen  administrative  officers  representing  him  as 
consumer  together  with  the  duly-chosen  administra¬ 
tive  officers  representing  him  as  producer  would  de¬ 
termine  the  economy  of  his  country  and  adjust  the 
conflict  between  his  interests  as  consumer  and  as 
producer.  These  officers  might  be  selected  by  two 
national  assemblies  chosen  by  the  parties  at  interest — 
the  consumers  and  the  producers.  They  would  guard 
the  standard  of  living,  which  is  the  main  concern  of 
the  consumer,  and  the  conditions  and  methods  of  pro¬ 
duction  which  are  the  main  concern  of  the  producer. 
They  would  reconcile  the  members  of  the  community 
with  one  another  and  with  their  own  selves  at  just 
the  point  where  their  conflict  is  the  most  basic,  the  most 
enduring,  and  the  most  disastrous  in  its  effects. 

VI 

The  similarity  of  this  theory  to  that  of  the  Guild 
Socialists  comes  at  once  to  mind.  Its  difference,  it 
was  pointed  out  in  course  of  the  discussion  among  the 
Parushim,  lies  in  the  very  important  fact  that  it  makes 
no  reservations  as  to  political  government  and  weights 
the  relative  values  of  consuming  and  producing  in¬ 
terests  almost  inversely.  Guild  Socialism  is  primarily 
interested  in  the  organization  of  production;  it  acqui¬ 
esces  in  the  form  of  political  association  already  existing. 
Preoccupied  with  the  application  of  a  mediaeval  system 
of  producers’  organization  to  modern  industry,  and 
regarding  the  problem  with  reference  to  the  established 
institutions  of  the  British  community,  its  protagonists 


312  ZIONISM  AND  WORLD  POLITICS 


could  not  have  come,  perhaps,  to  any  other  conclusion. 
Although  they  have  ignored,  in  the  formation  of  their 
theory,  the  role  and  significance  of  the  consumers’ 
cooperatives  in  England,  it  is  still  true  that  the  politico- 
economic  situation  is  there  too  complex,  too  full  of 
secondary  factors,  too  shot  through  with  vested  inter¬ 
ests  to  make  possible  anything  short  of  a  violent  transi¬ 
tion  from  the  existing  pattern  of  British  organization 
to  such  an  one  as  has  been  outlined  above.  In  Palestine 
again,  among  the  Arabs,  such  a  change  would  be  quite 
as  impossible.  For  the  barbarous  nature  of  the  Arab 
economy  in  Palestine  and  the  retarded  character  of 
the  fellah  institutional  culture  preclude  it,  desirable 
as  it  is.  A  long  process  of  education  and  cultivation 
must  intervene.  At  present  neither  the  Arab  mind  nor 
Arab  society,  with  its  tribal  organization,  its  nomadic 
groups,  its  cult  of  taboos  and  prescriptions-,  could  with¬ 
out  the  greatest  difficulty  adjust  itself  to  such  a  change, 
to  say  nothing  of  undertaking  it. 

The  only  people  among  whom  it  is  possible,  the  argu¬ 
ment  went  on,  are  the  Jews.  To  them  it  is  not  only 
possible,  it  is  inevitable.  It  is  inevitable,  regardless 
of  the  theoretic  validity  or  invalidity  of  the  plan. 
For  in  its  adoption  and  application,  in  the  minimum 
form  of  the  Pittsburgh  Programme,  lies  their  only 
chance  of  the  swift,  effective  conversion  of  Palestine 
into  a  Jewish  homeland.  The  reason  is,  that  no  matter 
what  part  of  the  western  world  they  come  from,  the 
standard  of  living  of  the  Jews  is  very  many  times 
higher  than  that  of  the  fellah.  They  could  never 
survive,  as  wage  earners,  in  competition  with  the  so- 
much-cheaper  Arab  labour.  They  would  be  com¬ 
pelled  either  to  emigrate  or  to  starve.  The  upshot 


“VITA  NUOVA?” 


313 


would  be  that  the  greater  part  of  agricultural  Jewish 
Palestine  would  become  a  collection  of  manorial 
estates  like  Petach  Tikwah,  and  the  industrial  Palestine 
to  be  created  would  be  a  Palestine  of  Jewish  owners 
and  Arab  workers.  The  total  Jewish  development  of 
Palestine  would  serve  only  to  keep  Jews  out  of  Palestine. 

To  keep  them  in,  they  must,  hence,  at  the  same  time, 
become  both  workers  and  owners.  If  the  whole  soil 
of  Palestine  were  already  in  private  hands,  the  situation 
would  become  one  of  extreme  difficulty.  To  change 
it  would  cost  immense  sums  of  money  and  perhaps 
bloodshed.  But  both  the  conceptions  of  land-tenure 
that  underlay  Turkish  law  and  the  actual  state  of 
ownership  in  Palestine  give  the  public  as  against  the 
private  right  a  certain  preeminence  in  prestige  and 
actual  dominion.  Only  15  per  cent,  of  Trans jor- 
dania,  20  of  Galilee,  and  50  per  cent,  of  Judea  are 
actually  held  by  the  fellah.  In  the  sanjak  of  Jeru¬ 
salem  only  some  sixteen  or  seventeen  thousand  fami¬ 
lies  of  them  make  their  living  from  agriculture,  and  on 
farms  varying  from  eight  to  twelve  acres  in  size.  Of 
the  balance  of  the  land,  a  great  proportion  is  in  the 
hands  of  absentee  landlords.  Many  of  these  acquired 
the  mass  of  their  holdings  by  means  of  fraudulent 
registrations  under  the  law  of  Tabu  formulated  by 
the  Porte  in  the  early  decades  of  the  second  half  of  the 
nineteenth  century.  This  law  created  the  same  effects 
in  Palestine  as  did  the  Enclosures  in  England.  Public 
lands,  commons,  came  into  private  hands.  Workers 
suddenly  found  themselves  transformed  from  owners 
to  tenants,  and  innumerable  fellah  freeholders  fell 
thereby  first  under  the  dominion  of  the  Mohammedan 
landlord  and  then  in  the  power  of  the  Christian  usurer. 


314  ZIONISM  AND  WORLD  POLITICS 


The  remainder  of  the  land  is  public  land,  actually 
in  the  possession  of  the  Government.  Exclusive  of 
the  territories  of  El  Arish  and  Transjordania,  this  land 
amounts  to  about  300,000  acres.  It  is  de  facto  the 
possession  of  the  whole  people.  So,  in  a  somewhat 
lesser  degree,  are  the  existing  Jewish  holdings  in  Pales¬ 
tine.  The  land  owned  by  the  National  Fund  is  that 
by  fundamental  law.  The  land  on  which  the  pro¬ 
prietary  colonists  are  settled  can  in  the  majority  of 
cases  not  be  held  to  be  either  legally  or  by  use  their 
own.  Much  of  it  is  under  mortgage  either  to  Baron 
Rothschild  or  the  Jewish  Colonization  Association, 
and  those  who  live  by  its  exploitation  are  not  really 
freeholders  at  all.  They  are  the  beneficiaries  of  a 
public  trust,  philanthropic  in  character  if  you  will, 
but  public,  and  capable  of  hypothecation  without 
improper  hardship  to  the  beneficiaries.  Thus  land  in 
Palestine  immediately  available  for  Jewish  settlement 
is  already  national  or  semi-national.1  But  its  very 
nature  would  compel  its  conversion,  if  it  were  private. 
For  it  is  not  like  land  in  other  parts  of  the  world  on 
which  pioneers  have  settled  and  at  once  found  a  living. 
To  make  it  habitable  requires  an  initial  investment 
which  is  like  investment  in  the  structure,  instruments, 
and  tools  of  an  industrial  plant.  It  must  be  “re- 

1News  has  recently  come  of  the  promulgation  of  a  land  transfer  ordinance 
by  the  office  of  the  High  Commissioner.  Under  this  ordinance  all  transac¬ 
tions  other  than  leases  of  three  years  must  be  carried  out  through  the  land- 
registry,  by  the  consent  of  the  administration.  Buyers  or  lessors  must  be 
residents  of  Palestine,  the  amount  of  their  purchase  is  limited  in  area  and 
price — about  £3,000— and  they  must  prove  their  intention  immediately 
to  undertake  cultivation  or  development.  It  is  to  be  observed  that  these 
provisions  will  prevent  land  speculation  but  will  not  encourage  extensive  or 
swift  Jewish  settlement.  As,  however,  the  High  Commissioner  is  not  bound 
to  the  law  but  can  consent  to  land  transactions  without  any  restrictions 
if  in  his  view  they  are  for  the  public  good,  the  prospects  of  Jewish  settle¬ 
ment  are  scarcely  altered  by  the  law. 


“VITA  NUOVA?” 


315 


claimed”  before  it  can  be  settled,  and  such  a  reclama¬ 
tion  is  beyond  the  powers  of  any  one  prospective  settler. 
It  is  a  charge  upon  the  Jewry  of  the  world,  the  returns 
on  which  it  may  take  a  generation  to  produce.  A 
public  charge  of  this  kind  cannot  be  carried  except  by 
a  public  administration,  under  public  control. 

With  respect  to  public  utilities  and  natural  resources, 
the  situation  is  somewhat  different.  Transport  facili¬ 
ties,  bar  those  built  during  the  Great  War  by  the  British 
army  for  war  purposes,  are  either  privately  owned  or 
heavily  mortgaged  and  bear,  like  all  the  public  works 
in  the  recent  Turkish  Empire,  an  interest  and  mainte¬ 
nance  charge  out  of  all  proportion  to  their  earning 
powers.  There  are  no  other  public  utilities  to  speak 
of.  They  will  have  to  be  created.  The  fundamental 
one,  on  which  all  others  will  necessarily  depend,  is  a 
hydro-electric  service  from  the  utilization  of  the  water¬ 
power  in  the  drop  of  the  Jordan.  This  is  the  foremost, 
wellnigh  the  only  one  of  the  natural  resources  of  the 
land.  Both  transport  and  industry  must  wait  upon 
making  available  this  power,  and  whether  and  how  it 
is  to  be  provided  is  contingent  upon  political  questions 
of  doubtful  issue.  These  are  the  questions  of  the 
northern  boundary  and  of  the  mandate.  The  latter  is 
the  more  important,  for  by  its  economic  terms  will  be 
established  whether  the  decision  at  San  Remo  may 
actually  be  converted  from  a  formula  into  a  fact. 
If  the  Jews  of  the  world  do  through  the  Zionist  Organ¬ 
ization  in  fact  receive  that  priority  in  economic  con¬ 
cessions  on  which  alone  the  building  of  a  Jewish  Pales¬ 
tine  can  be  hopefully  postulated,  they  will  have  the 
opportunity  to  put  into  use  the  natural  resources  of 
Palestine  and  to  develop  the  necessary  public  utilities 


316  ZIONISM  AND  WORLD  POLITICS 


under  conditions  of  a  public  trust.  Their  claims  as 
against  possible  competitors  are  allowable  only  on  this 
basis,  and  neither  the  status  of  public  utilities  elsewhere 
in  the  world,  particularly  in  England,  nor  the  character 
of  the  problem  permit  of  any  other.1 

Thus,  in  the  very  nature  of  the  case,  the  land  and 
other  natural  resources  and  the  public  utilities  of  a 
Jewish  Palestine  must  come  under  public  control  and 
be  developed  for  public  use.  A  new,  large,  and  swift 
settlement  of  self-supporting  Jews  does  not  seem  to  be 
possible  under  any  other  conditions.  That  such  a 
socialization  would  meet  with  resistance  from  the 
vested  Jewish  interests  already  established  in  Palestine 
is  of  course  a  foregone  conclusion.  But  it  is  equally 
foregone  that  such  resistance  could  be  broken  down 
either  by  force  or  persuasion.  There  is  a  precedent 
for  persuasion  having  the  weight  of  religious  authority. 
This  precedent  is  to  be  found  in  the  Book  of  Nehemiah, 
which  portrays  a  situation  not  unlike  the  present  one. 
Nehemiah  is  the  Jewish  High  Commissioner  from 
Persia,  devout,  loyal,  competent.  He  finds  the  country¬ 
side  a  desert  and  the  city  a  desolation.  He  finds  the 
“restored”  Jewish  community  in  the  homeland  sur¬ 
rounded  by  intriguing,  inimical  neighbours2  and  divided 

1  Cf.  Footnote  p.  292  supra. 

2  Then  there  arose  a  great  cry  of  the  people  and  of  their  wives  against 
their  brethren  the  Jews.  For  there  were  that  said.  We,  our  sons  and  our 
daughters  are  many:  let  us  get  grain,  that  we  may  eat  and  live.  Some  also 
there  were  that  said.  We  are  mortgaging  our  fields,  and  our  vineyards  and 
our  houses:  let  us  get  grain  because  of  the  dearth.  There  were  also  that 
said,  We  have  borrowed  money  for  the  King’s  tribute  upon  our  fields  and 
vineyards.  Yet  now  our  flesh  is  as  the  flesh  of  our  brethren,  our  children  as 
their  children:  and  lo,  we  bring  into  bondage  our  sons,  and  our  daughters  to 
be  servants,  and  some  of  our  daughters  are  brought  into  bondage  already: 
neither  is  it  in  our  power  to  help  it,  for  other  men  have  our  fields  and  our 
vineyards. 

And  I  was  very  angry  when  I  heard  their  cry  and  these  words.  Then 
I  consulted  with  myself  and  contended  with  the  nobles  and  the  rulers,  and 


I 


“VITA  NUOVA?”  317 

into  wealthy  and  exploiting  land-owning  and  clerical 
classes  on  the  one  side,  and  oppressed,  impoverished, 
and  degraded  masses  on  the  other.1  To  guard  against 
the  neighbours  all  the  workers  are  made  to  become 
soldiers  as  well.  Against  exploitation  Nehemiah  re¬ 
calls  the  labour  and  sacrifices  of  the  Diaspora  and 
invokes  the  piety  and  loyalty  of  the  classes.  He  suc¬ 
ceeds.  He  also  secures  considerable  contributions 
toward  the  rebuilding  of  the  city  from  the  “heads 
of  fathers’  houses,”  and  finally  he  calls  a  public  as¬ 
sembly,  at  which  the  Law  is  read  by  Ezra,  translated 
to  the  people,  and  the  keeping  of  it  sworn,  particularly 
of  that  portion  of  it  dealing  with  land  tenure  and 
indebtedness.2 

History,  it  may  be  inferred,  still  continues  to  repeat 
itself,  though  with  a  difference,  a  difference  often  so 
great  as  to  turn  repetition  into  mutation.  In  the 
case  of  the  restoration  of  the  Jewish  homeland,  the 
difference  is  very  great,  but  it  is  not  a  mutation. 
The  same  essential  conditions  reappear:  the  same  need 
of  the  masses,  the  same  danger,  the  same  spirit  in  the 

said  unto  them:  Ye  exact  usury,  every  one  of  his  brother.  And  I  held  a  great 
assembly  against  them.  And  I  said  unto  them,  We  after  our  abilities  have 
redeemed  our  brethren  the  Jews,  that  were  sold  unto  the  nations :  and  would 
ye  even  sell  your  brethren,  and  should  they  be  sold  unto  us?  Then  held 
they  their  peace  and  found  never  a  word.  Also  I  said.  The  thing  that  ye 
do  is  not  good:  ought  ye  not  to  walk  in  the  fear  of  God,  because  of  the  re¬ 
proach  of  the  nations  our  enemies?  ...  I  pray  you  let  us  leave  off  this 
usury.  Restore,  I  pray  you,  to  them,  even  this  day,  their  fields,  their 
vineyards,  their  oliveyards  and  their  houses,  also  the  hundredth  part  of  the 
grain,  the  new  wine,  and  the  oil  that  ye  exact  from  them.  Then  said  they : 
We  will  restore  them  and  will  require  nothing  of  them.  .  .  .  Then  I 

called  the  priests  and  took  an  oath  of  them,  that  they  would  do  according 
to  this  promise.  .  .  .  And  the  people  did  according  to  this  promise. 

(Nehemiah  v,  1-12.) 

]As,  on  the  record,  the  Arabs  of  to-day  have  been,  and  are  likely  to  be,  with 
alien  help,  for  some  time  to  come,  unless  their  counsels  are  more  surely  guided 
than  heretofore. 

2 Nehemiah,  ix-x,  31. 


318  ZIONISM  AND  WORLD  POLITICS 


economic  proposals  to  obviate  the  danger  and  to  serve 
the  need.  There  are  no  men  of  considerable  wealth 
and  land-ownership  among  the  Jews  of  Palestine. 
They  are  prevailingly  paupers,  living  on  Halukah. 
Such  as  there  are,  however,  might  well  be  persuaded  by 
the  precedent  recorded  by  Nehemiah,  to  convert  their 
holdings  into  cooperative  Jewish  farms.  The  alterna¬ 
tive  is  for  them  to  make  alliance  with  the  Arab  ab¬ 
sentee  landlords — in  which  case  history  would  repeat 
itself,  indeed — or  to  be  crowded  out  automatically  by 
the  competition  with  the  cooperative  community. 

VII 

The  rudiments  of  this  community  already  exist. 
But  it  must  not  be  supposed  that  they  originated  ex 
nihilo ,  as  the  fulfilment  of  a  Utopian  ideal  and  the 
carrying  out  of  a  “revolutionary ”  programme.  They 
arose  automatically  out  of  the  total  situation  in  which 
the  life  and  labour  of  the  people  of  Palestine  were 
involved,  and  the  crux  of  the  problem  of  the  economic 
organization  of  contemporary  Palestinian  Jewry  is 
to  be  found  in  the  question  as  to  whether  they  are 
capable  of  correction  and  guidance  to  the  point  of 
functioning  as  agencies  for  the  economic  assimilation 
of  great  units  of  immigrant  Jews. 

Of  these  rudiments,  the  consumers’  cooperative  is 
the  more  recent,  and  by  far  the  more  successful. 
It  goes  by  the  name  of  Hamashbir,  literally,  the  grain- 
purveyor.  Organized  in  1914,  shortly  after  the  begin¬ 
ning  of  the  Great  War,  by  the  five  hundred  or  so  Jewish 
labourers  in  Petah  Tikwah  who  found  themselves 
threatened  with  starvation  under  the  profiteering 
which  the  war  occasioned,  it  succeeded  with  its  limited 


“VITA  NUOVA?” 


319 


means  not  merely  to  reduce  the  cost  of  living  materially 
but  to  undertake  the  manufacture  of  jams  and  to  give 
employment  to  a  few  of  its  members.  When,  in  1917, 
the  Palestine  Commission  arrived,  it  made  Hamashbir 
a  loan  to  enable  it  to  extend  its  operations.  These 
were  not  conducted  according  to  the  Rochdale  plan 
of  selling  at  the  market-price  and  distributing  the  differ¬ 
ence  between  the  market  and  the  cost-price  as  a 
“profit”  or  dividend  at  the  end  of  the  year.  Nor 
were  purchases  limited  to  the  membership.  The 
society  sold  at  cost  to  everybody.  So  important 
were  its  services  in  the  first  year  that  its  expansion 
was  inevitable.  In  the  three  years  following  it  was 
the  purchaser  of  all  the  grain  produced  in  the  Jewish 
colonies,  and  established  thus  a  relation  between  itself 
and  the  producers’  cooperatives.  So  far,  what  it  did,  it 
did  for  labourers  only.  In  1918,  however,  the  approach 
of  the  British  army  and  the  retreat  of  the  Turks  led 
to  a  kiting  of  prices  in  the  approved  style,  and  the 
workers  in  the  Bezalel  shops,  the  teachers  and  the 
other  “white-collar”  proletarians,  clamoured  for  provi¬ 
sion  through  the  agency  of  the  society.  The  provision 
was  promised  and  the  country  was  scoured  to  add 
foodstuffs  enough  to  meet  their  needs.  But  by  the 
time  this  provision  was  secured,  at  exorbitant  prices, 
the  British  had  entered  Palestine,  bringing  with  them 
grains  and  other  comestibles.  Prices  immediately 
fell.  The  “white-collar”  people  refused  to  buy  the 
commodities  that  had  been  secured  in  their  behalf. 
There  was  no  way  of  holding  them  to  their  agreement, 
and  thus  the  Cooperative  Society  found  itself  with 
the  burden  of — for  it,  a  very  large  deficit — about  £6,000 
(sterling).  This  deficit  has  been  called,  by  the  directors 


320  ZIONISM  AND  WORLD  POLITICS 


of  the  Anglo-Palestine  Bank,  a  proof  of  the  incom¬ 
petency  of  the  managers  of  the  society  and  of  the 
society’s  impracticality,  and  has  been  made  the  basis 
for  refusing  it  further  credit.  As  against  this  refusal 
credit  has  been  extended  to  a  new  cooperative  society, 
recently  formed  for  these  same  44 white-collar”  classes, 
called  Hamazmin — the  importer.  A  class  war  between 
cooperatives  has  been  initiated,  not — it  is  impossible 
to  believe — without  malice. 

The  ill-will  of  the  Anglo-Palestine  company’s  officials 
has,  however,  affected  the  activities  of  Hamashbir  very 
little.  It  received  credit  from  the  44 groups”  or  Cooper¬ 
ative  Producers’  Societies,  who  sold  it  all  their  produce. 
It  established  a  connection  with  the  English  Coopera¬ 
tive  Wholesale,  which  also  gave  it  credit.  It  has  sur¬ 
vived  its  crisis,  and  is  again  showing  a  profit  that  may 
enable  it  to  meet  its  indebtedness. 

Nevertheless,  the  strictures  of  the  officials  of  the 
Anglo-Palestine  Company  are  deserved,  simply  from 
the  point  of  view  of  cooperative  technique  and  the 
future  of  the  society.  It  continues  to  sell  to  every¬ 
body — workers,  44  white-collarer,”  shop-keeper  who  may 
be  buying  to  resell,  Jewish  “colonist”  or  Christian 
usurer.  It  undersells  the  ordinary  shop-keeper,  but 
it  does  not  require  the  purchaser  to  be  a  member 
of  the  society.  Of  the  seven ty-five  to  one  hundred 
thousand  Jews  in  Palestine  of  whom  five  or  six  thousand 
are  organized  workmen,  only  about  one  thousand 
are  shareholders.  Being  a  shareholder  gives  no  one 
any  advantage  over  the  rest  of  the  population.  This 
benefits  simply  at  the  expense  of  the  shareholders  and 
the  profit-making  competitors.  It  is  being  confirmed 
in  its  vicious  habits  of  competitive  purchase.  To 


“VITA  NUOVA?” 


321 


function  as  an  effective  assimilating  agent  to  consumer’s 
cooperation  Hamashbir  must  adopt  the  Rochdale 
plan.  It  must  absorb  Hamazmin.  It  must  do  every¬ 
thing  in  its  power  to  make  itself  the  national  Coopera¬ 
tive  Society,  with  every  Jew  in  Palestine  a  member. 
It  should  at  once  place  itself  in  the  hands  of  the  British 
Cooperative  Wholesale  Society  for  guidance  and  train¬ 
ing  toward  this  end.  It  should,  if  it  is  wisely  managed, 
be  able  to  secure  money  to  lease  or  buy  new  lands  on 
which  it  may  settle  its  own  members  as  cooperative 
producers’  groups,  supply  them  with  tools,  machinery, 
cattle,  instruction,  and  other  necessaries,  and  produce, 
at  least,  most  of  the  foodstuffs  that  its  members  con¬ 
sume.  If  it  grows  more  powerful  it  should  extend 
its  operations  to  the  arts,  crafts,  and  industries,  until 
as  the  National  Consumers’  Cooperative  Society  of 
Palestine  it  is  the  holder  of  all  the  land  and  of  the 
natural  resources  and  the  owner  of  the  tools  and 
instruments  of  production  in  the  land. 

In  the  holdings  of  the  National  Fund,  in  the  actual 
processes  of  financing  Palestinian  undertakings,  the 
beginnings  already  exist.  By  squeezing  the  philan¬ 
thropy  out  of  them,  by  making  their  beneficiaries 
responsible  for  them  through  the  obligation  and 
necessity  of  supplying  their  own  needs — i.  e.,  by  making 
their  cost  a  charge  against  the  Jews  of  Palestine  or¬ 
ganized  as  consumers,  these  beginnings  can  be  developed 
into  agencies  of  economic  self-support  and  moral 
freedom  for  the  inhabitants  of  the  Jewish  homeland. 

For  in  relation  to  production  also,  the  beginnings 
exist  and  are  not  unfavourable.  Of  the  five  or  six 
thousand  workers  who  make  up  the  membership  of  the 
Ahduth  Avodah  or  Labour  Union  of  Jewish  Palestine 


322  ZIONISM  AND  WORLD  POLITICS 


more  than  half  are  agricultural  labourers — composing 
the  Agricultural  Labourers’  Union.  Of  these  from 
one  half  to  one  third  are  settled  upon  public  land  in 
Kwuzoth  or  cooperative  communities.  It  is  these  com¬ 
munities  which  in  its  dark  hour  sold  their  produce 
to  Hamashbir  on  credit,  sold  it  in  spite  of  the  higher 
rate  they  might  have  received  from  other  purchasers 
and  their  great  need  of  this  higher  price.  Now  these 
communities — there  are  about  twenty-two  of  them 
— are  far  from  self-supporting.  They  are  composed 
almost  exclusively  of  physically  weak,  agriculturally 
untrained  men  and  women,  European  intellectuals 
all,  who  have  undertaken  pioneership  out  of  love  of 
Zion.  They  have  been  settled  by  the  Palastina  Amt 
or  other  agencies  on  such  land  as  was  available,  without 
regard  to  either  sanitary  conditions  or  the  essentials 
of  housing  and  labour.  They  are  unskilled,  and  no 
competent  training,  no  foremanship  has  been  supplied 
them.  Once  in  a  long  time  an  expert-by-book  would 
visit  them  and  give  them  a  lecture,  but  the  develop¬ 
ment  of  manual  skill  and  practical  competency  by 
example  was  not  attempted,  because  there  was  nobody 
in  officialdom  able  to  attempt  it.1  Nevertheless, 
ignorant,  untrained,  regularly  losing  from  50  to  25 
per  cent,  of  their  working  time  through  malaria,  they 
held  on.  They  had  obligated  themselves  to  the  Jewish 
National  Fund,  the  Jewish  Colonization  Association, 
or  the  Ahuzoth  (Land  Acquisition  Societies)  for  the 
cost  of  buildings,  of  equipment,  and  often  of  food. 

1The  significance  of  this  fact  may  be  noted  in  the  story  of  the  sudden  suc¬ 
cess  of  the  bee  industry  in  the  Jewish  colonies.  Attempts  made  at  various 
times  prior  to  the  appearance  of  a  practical  bee-keeper — Livshitz  of  the 
Mikweh  Israel  school — failed.  The  latter  within  a  year  taught  the  colonies 
to  produce  honey  at  a  profit. 


“VITA  NUOVA?” 


323 


The  obligations  were  to  be  paid  out  of  their  earnings, 
but,  as  they  themselves  sardonically  declared,  all  that 
they  earned — all  that  they  could  earn — was  a  deficit. 
The  life  organized  for  them  and  by  them  has  been  a 
compromise  between  an  ideology  and  a  condition.  As 
they  possessed  neither  the  materials  nor  the  technology 
to  master  the  condition,  they  found  escape  in  their 
ideology  and  in  the  free  play  it  could  get  in  the  politics 
of  Jewish  life  in  Palestine.  If  their  communities  are 
not  “culturally”  Arabized  as  are  the  “colonial”  settle¬ 
ments,  they  are  economically  Arabized,  in  that  the 
standard  of  living  has  been  degraded  and  the  tech¬ 
nological  morale ,  wherever  it  developed,  as  in  Mer- 
chavia,  destroyed. 

Nevertheless,  they  represent  the  basic  type  of 
agricultural  organization  on  which  alone  the  building 
of  a  Jewish  Palestine  can  be  successfully  accomplished. 
Given  competent  foremanship,  instruction  aiming  at 
manual  skill,  and  practical  agricultural  judgment  in¬ 
stead  of  theoretical  botanical  knowledge;  given  proper 
sanitation  and  modern  tools,  the  urge  which  took  these 
young  people  to  Palestine  and  holds  them  there  can 
be  turned  into  a  technological  channel  where  now  it 
runs  in  merely  a  political  one.  The  point  of  depart¬ 
ure  for  their  cooperative  organization  can  then  become 
the  problem  involved  in  their  work,  and  the  free 
ordering  of  their  lives  can  at  last  take  its  direction  from 
this  common  base.  As  members  of  the  Consumers’ 
Cooperative,  they  will,  in  their  producers’  association, 
be  working  equally  for  themselves  and  their  fellows. 
They  will  be  responsible  to  their  peers,  not  to  their 
alien  and  superior  benefactors.  The  whole  basis  of 
their  incentives  will  be  shifted,  and  will  become  more 


324  ZIONISM  AND  WORLD  POLITICS 


pertinent  to  the  inward  interests  and  the  actual  course 
and  condition  of  their  daily  lives. 

The  same  thing  is  true  in  a  lesser  degree  of  the  other 
crafts  and  industries  represented  in  the  Ahduth  Avodah. 
There  are  two  cooperative  societies  of  printers  and  of 
carpenters,  one  of  bakers,  one  of  shoemakers,  one  of 
machinists.  The  iron  workers,  and  of  course  the  rail¬ 
road  workers,  are  not  in  a  position  to  labour  coopera¬ 
tively,  and  of  the  bakers,  the  majority  are  “hands,” 
not  partners  in  the  enterprise.  Their  membership 
in  Hamashbir,  the  acquisition  by  Hamashbir  of  the 
private  bakershops  and  printeries  and  carpenteries 
and  machine  shops  and  such,  are  easy  steps,  pre¬ 
requisite  to  the  reorganization  of  the  practitioners  of 
these  crafts  into  self-governing  producers’  units,  each 
embracing  all  the  levels  and  stages  of  the  industries 
and  including  an  adequate  system  of  apprenticeship 
and  industrial  education.  The  step  toward  the  conver¬ 
sion  of  the  railroads  into  a  cooperative  producers’ - 
consumers’  enterprise  is  a  more  complicated  and  diffi¬ 
cult  one.  Imperialistic  foreign  investment  is  involved 
and  the  Jewish  employees  are  in  very  small  minority. 
The  first  move  must  be  toward  the  representation  of 
the  workers  in  the  existing  management,  and  the  focal- 
ization  of  their  interest  upon  the  problems  of  manage¬ 
ment. 

For  the  rest,  Ahduth  Avodah  itself  constitutes  the 
beginning  of  the  national  producers’  organization. 
Its  constituent  units  are  the  associations,  unions, 
“groups”  of  the  various  craftsmen  and  workers  at 
present  composing  the  organized  section  of  the  labour 
or  producers’  interest  of  the  Jewish  homeland.  But 
both  in  its  form  and  in  its  objective  Ahduth  Avodah  is 


“VITA  NUOVA?” 


325 


preoccupied  not  with  self-government  in  industry, 
not  with  effecting  coordination,  economy,  and  com¬ 
petency  in  the  business  of  production,  but  with  the 
class  war  which  is  the  interest  of  mere  trades  unionism, 
with  the  beneficiary  institutions  of  such  unionism — 
i.  e.,  Ahduth  Avodah  maintains  a  sick  fund,  an  employ¬ 
ment  bureau,  a  bureau  of  information,  a  kitchen, 
and  a  sanatorium  (not,  of  course,  at  its  own  expense 
merely) — and  most  of  all  with  the  political  manoeuvring 
which  is  so  much  a  filling,  like  cards  for  the  idle,  of  the 
otherwise  empty  lives  in  Palestine.  The  Union  has  been 
made  to  reflect  the  political  and  ideological  differences 
of  the  Jewish  Socialist  parties  in  the  Diaspora,  and  like 
all  Jewish  organizations  has  been  inclined  to  lay  more 
stress  on  ideology  than  on  the  problems  of  the  daily 
life.  Recently  it  has  shown  signs  of  waking  up  to 
the  realities  of  the  situation.  If  it  become  thoroughly 
awake,  it  will  at  once  devote  itself  to  the  expansion 
of  Hamashbir  and  the  inclusion  of  all  the  Jewish  in¬ 
habitants  of  Palestine,  whether  otherwise  cooperators 
or  not,  in  workers’  or  producers’  associations  that 
shall  then  become  members  of  the  Ahduth  Avodah. 
The  teachers  are  already  organized,  and  in  terms  of 
the  American  Zionist  Medical  Unit,  the  physicians 
and  sanitarians  are  organized.  They  should  be  in¬ 
cluded  in  Ahduth  Avodah.  So  should  all  other  profes¬ 
sions,  crafts,  industries  that  supply  commodities  or 
services  for  the  inhabitants  of  the  Jewish  homeland. 
Their  mutual  relations  should  be  thoroughly  analyzed 
and  defined,  and  a  programme  of  common  action 
looking  ultimately  toward  a  commonwealth  based  on 
primarily  economic  and  functional  relationships  should 
be  worked  out  and  undertaken.  The  proximate  end  in 


326  ZIONISM  AND  WORLD  POLITICS 


view  should  be  to  create  a  set  of  institutions  that  will 
be  ready  to  replace  the  mandatory  in  full  responsibil¬ 
ity  for  the  life  of  the  commonwealth.  Perhaps  the 
central  item  in  such  a  programme,  if  the  implications 
of  the  present  organization  are  acknowledged  to  their 
logical  limit,  is  education. 

VIII 

Now  there  exists  a  certain  traditional  eulogium 
regarding  the  Jewish  interest  in  and  aptitude  for  educa¬ 
tion.  This  eulogium  is  misleading,  for  the  reason 
that  successful  education  is  never  education  in  a 
vacuum.  Teaching  and  learning  are  always  the  teach¬ 
ing  and  learning  of  some  particular  thing,  at  a  given 
time  and  in  a  given  place  and  under  given  circumstances. 
The  significance  and  value  of  what  is  taught  and  what 
is  learned  are  determined  by  its  relevance  to  the  life 
that  it  is  supposed  to  liberate  and  to  guide  at  the 
time  and  in  the  place  and  under  the  circumstances. 
The  education  on  which  the  Jewish  “love  of  learning” 
is  postulated  has  been  irrelevant,  other-worldly,  specula¬ 
tive,  and  verbal.  It  has  had  little  regard  for  the 
realities  of  things,  and  much  for  typical  compensations- 
in-idea  for  the  unsatisfactoriness  of  those  realities. 
It  has  been  an  education  in  fantasy  and  dream.  This 
has  been  almost  as  true  of  the  modern  Yiddish  and 
neo-Hebrew  developments — vide  Ahad  Ha’amism — 
as  of  the  older  Talmudical  ones.  In  Palestine  it  has 
been  notorious.  The  whole  so-called  “modern”  system 
of  education  there  is  education  by  book.  The  teachers 
are  mostly  untrained  in  pedagogical  technique,  neo- 
Hebraists  who  are  teachers  by  virtue  of  their  devotion 
to  Hebrew  rather  than  by  virtue  of  their  professional 


“VITA  NUOVA?” 


327 


competency.  Associated  into  a  union,  they  share  with 
the  community  and  the  Zionists  the  responsibility  for 
the  organization  and  the  effectiveness  of  instruction. 
The  agency  of  this  responsibility  is  the  Vaad  Hachinucli , 
composed  of  three  representatives  of  each  of  the  three 
parties  at  interest.  But  the  Vaad  has  established  no 
effective  coordination  and  exercises  no  competent 
control.  It  has  no  system  of  records,  no  adequate 
supervision.  Principals  and  teachers  do  much  as 
they  please,  without  regard  to  professional  standards 
of  effectiveness  and  improvement.  Vocational  educa¬ 
tion  there  is  none  whatsoever.  Instruction  is  ex¬ 
clusively  by  book  and  by  word.  Its  victims  are 
taught  Hebrew  but  not  the  conditions  of  labour  and 
the  practice  of  life  according  to  the  requirements 
of  Palestine.  They  are  taught  in  places  which  are 
sanitary  abominations,  and  with  materials  almost 
barbarous  in  their  inadequacy.  Nevertheless,  the 
cost  of  instruction,  in  the  light  of  the  returns  on  it,  is 
extraordinarily  high,  and  is  paid  for  almost  wholly 
by  contributions  from  America.  The  Palestinian 
community  shirks  the  responsibility:  of  the  £100,000 
or  so  spent  in  1919  on  education,  Palestinians  contrib¬ 
uted  only  £8,000.  Adult  education,  barring  instruc¬ 
tion  in  Hebrew  secured  at  their  own  cost  by  voluntary 
classes,  is  practically  non-existent. 

Clearly,  for  a  pioneer  country  like  Palestine,  where 
relevant  knowledge  is  of  the  uttermost  importance, 
these  conditions  are  criminal.  Public  education  will 
have  to  take  as  its  point  of  departure  the  conditions 
and  necessities  of  life  in  Palestine,  not  irrelevant 
cultural  conceptions  generated  outside  of  Palestine. 
It  will  have  to  move  from  work  to  vision,  in  terms  of 


328  ZIONISM  AND  WORLD  POLITICS 


the  actual  economic  enterprises  undertaken  and  de¬ 
veloped  in  Palestine  and  of  the  forms  of  free  human 
organization  these  indicate  or  require.  Thus — to 
take  topics  of  instruction  mostly  absent  from  the 
Palestinian  curriculum — geography  must  be  taught 
as  an  actual  outgrowth  of  the  topography  of  the  scene 
of  the  daily  life,  and  not  as  a  remote  thing  in  a  book; 
zoology  must  be  made  to  derive  from  animal  life  on 
the  farm;  botany,  similarly  from  the  vegetable  life, 
or  from  the  problems  of  the  carpenter’s  shop.  Particu¬ 
larly  must  the  so-called  social  sciences — economics, 
sociology,  history,  social  psychology — spring  directly 
from  the  actual  processes  of  want  and  work  as  want  is 
expressed  and  work  is  organized  and  undertaken  at 
home,  and  as  it  is  known  to  be  undertaken  abroad. 
Instruction,  which  is  now  the  inculcation  of  doctrine, 
must  become  the  creation  of  practice,  and  the  deriva¬ 
tion  of  doctrine  from  practice.1  To  accomplish  this 
will  require  the  importation,  for  the  young,  of  a  large 
number  of  teachers,  preferably  from  the  United  States, 
who  can  teach  the  use  of  the  hands  as  against  those 
that  teach  the  use  of  the  tongue.  It  will  require, 
for  adults,  the  provision  of  competent  foremen  and 
of  higher  officers  of  management  who  will  know  how 
to  make  of  every  farm  and  factory  a  school  that  will 
reveal  the  interlinking  of  the  specific  operation  on  the 
spot  with  the  present  life,  the  past  history,  and  the 
future  destiny  of  men  the  world  over.  And  this  will 
need  to  be  done  as  quickly  as  possible  at  a  charge  upon 
the  economic  unit  involved,  not  upon  the  charity  of 
the  Diaspora. 

Education,  in  a  word,  must  become  an  integral  part. 


lCf.  Dewey:  “Democracy  and  Education.” 


“VITA  NUOVA?” 


329 


expressly  provided  for,  of  every  enterprise  undertaken 
in  Palestine.  The  remaking  of  the  mind  of  the  present 
population,  the  reconstruction  of  the  population  to 
come,  must  not  be  left  to  the  decision  of  events,  to 
chance,  or  to  circumstance.  The  growth  of  the  com¬ 
monwealth,  no  less  than  the  growth  of  its  children, 
must  be  consciously  directed.  Its  institutions  must 
be  realizations  of  its  ideals,  not  contradictions  of  them; 
its  ideals  must  be  expressions  of  its  institutions,  not 
compensations  for  them.  Broadly  speaking,  hence,  the 
educational  system  must  be  made  coincident  with  the 
whole  community.  Not  merely  in  the  official  schools, 
but  in  each  enterprise  of  agriculture  and  of  industry 
men  and  women  must  be  taught  the  art  of  self- 
government  and  of  specific  technological  responsibility 
through  self-government. 

For  the  young,  moreover,  who  are  at  school,  an 
opportunity  for  public  service  should  be  provided. 
It  should  be  provided  because  what  would  otherwise 
be  the  cost  of  this  service  could  be  used  in  maintaining 
the  compulsory  school  age  up  to  the  age  of  nineteen 
or  twenty.  It  should  be  provided,  also,  because  it  is 
the  surest  guarantee  of  the  survival  of  a  democratic 
spirit  and  the  maintenance  of  a  democratic  morale. 
Much  of  the  misunderstanding  between  classes  of 
society,  not  merely  between  rich  and  poor,  but  between 
carpenters  and  machinists,  bricklayers  and  plumbers, 
farmers  and  industrialists,  physicians  and  mechanics, 
is  due  to  their  failure  imaginatively  to  realize  each  others’ 
lives.  This  failure  comes  from  the  absence  of  common 
fundamental  experience  in  the  business  of  living.  A 
man  who  has  never  actually  spread  dung  in  a  wheat- 
field,  cleared  out  an  irrigation  ditch,  run  a  lathe,  or 


330  ZIONISM  AND  WORLD  POLITICS 


mended  a  road  can  never  get  the  outlook  of  one  whose 
life  consists  in  doing  just  that  and  nothing  more. 
There  are,  undoubtedly,  in  every  population,  a  propor¬ 
tion  of  persons  whose  abilities  extend  to  nothing  more. 
And  it  is  recognized  that  there  are  also  a  far  greater 
proportion  known  as  “the  average  man”  who  can  live 
and  work  on  a  richer  and  more  varied  level,  but  who 
do  not  get  the  opportunity.  It  is  agreed,  moreover, 
that  no  educational  system  is  competent  which  does 
not  supply  the  maximum  of  opportunity,  and  what  has 
been  suggested  should,  if  properly  undertaken,  accom¬ 
plish  just  that.  But  it  still  remains  inexorably  a  fact 
that  every  community  rests  upon  certain  basic  activities 
— the  so-called  “dirty  work”  of  civilized  society — * 
which  are  the  foundations  and  occasions  of  the  more 
specialized  activities  of  the  different  crafts,  trades, 
industries,  and  professions,  whatever  be  their  nature. 
In  this  “dirty  work,”  hence,  every  citizen  should  have 
a  share:  in  building  roads,  digging  irrigation  ditches, 
tending  fields  or  orchards,  running  machines,  and  so 
on.  The  time  for  this  work  is  during  the  school  age — 
in  the  vacations  of  the  period  from  the  fourteenth 
to  the  twentieth  year.  After  schooldays,  whatever  en¬ 
terprise  or  profession  is  desirable  or  fit:  during  school¬ 
days,  participation  in  the  indispensable  basic  activities 
of  the  community. 

Education  would  thus  be  made  to  play  its  inevitable 
role  to  the  advantage  and  not  the  obstruction  of  the 
development  of  the  Jewish  homeland.  Take  care  of 
education,  says  Plato,  and  education  will  take  care  of 
everything  else.  Whatever  the  climate,  the  condition 
of  the  land,  the  nature  and  extent  of  the  natural  re¬ 
sources,  the  social  traditions  and  individual  character 


“VITA  NUOVA?” 


331 


of  the  people,  whatever  their  present  interests  and 
future  aspirations  may  be  and  imply,  the  one  force 
which  will  count  more  than  any  other  toward  the  altera¬ 
tion  or  perfection  of  these  is  education.  In  the  end 
the  success  or  failure  of  the  New  Zion  will  be  attrib¬ 
utable  to  the  quality,  extent,  direction,  and  competency 
of  its  educational  system. 


IX 

In  the  end.  .  .  . 

In  the  end,  clearly.  But  not  more  so  than  in  the 
beginning.  The  beginning  is,  however,  modified  by 
other  considerations,  most  of  which  have  been 
enumerated  and  studied.  There  remains  one  to  con¬ 
sider  in  conclusion,  which  is  of  primary  importance. 
This  is  the  will  and  attitude  of  the  sources  of  capital. 
For  assuming  even  the  best  will  on  the  part  of  the  au¬ 
thorities  and  the  Jews  of  Palestine  toward  the  attain¬ 
ment  of  the  type  of  community  here  indicated,  the  very 
great  sums  that  the  initial  investment  in  such  an  enter¬ 
prise  will  require  make  the  whole  matter  ultimately 
dependent  on  the  sources  of  capital.  These  sources 
will  of  necessity  be  found  outside  the  Zionist  organiza¬ 
tion,  among  the  Jews — particularly  the  great  and  rich 
Jews — of  the  world.  How  they  envisage  their  relation 
to  Palestine,  what  they  mean  to  do  and  to  refrain 
from  doing  becomes  the  central  fact  of  the  Diaspora 
upon  which  the  reorganization  of  the  Zionist  move¬ 
ment  itself  must  turn.  The  indications  are  that  their 
attitude  is  positive  and  responsible,  conspicuously  in 
England  and  in  the  United  States.  In  England  an 
Economic  Council  has  been  forming,  under  the  leader 
ship  of  Sir  Alfred  Mond  and  Major  James  de  Roths- 


332  ZIONISM  AND  WORLD  POLITICS 

child,  and  in  the  United  States  the  Conference  of 
American  Rabbis  have  adopted  resolutions  declaring 
that  however  much  they  differ  from  the  Zionists  in 
theory,  they  are  desirous  to  join  hands  with  them  in 
the  upbuilding  of  Palestine.  Where  Zionism  was  felt 
as  a  challenge  and  a  defiance,  Palestine  is  felt  as  a 
task  and  a  responsibility.  There  appears  no  sufficient 
reason  to  doubt  that  the  non-Zionist  Jews  accept  and 
will  carry  the  task. 

But  how,  and  on  what  conditions?  The  usual  in¬ 
centives  to  investment  are  lacking  in  the  case  of 
Palestine.  Even  the  interest  on  a  government  loan, 
should  one  be  called  for,  would  need  to  be  somewhat 
below  the  market,  if  the  Jews  only  were  to  take  it, 
as  an  earnest  of  good  faith.  Many  of  the  enterprises 
to  be  undertaken  in  Palestine  will  earn  no  income  what¬ 
soever  in  the  beginning,  and  only  a  small  one  in  the 
course  of  time.  A  sense  of  religious  duty,  of  social 
responsibility,  these  far  more  than  the  desire  for  profit, 
may  be.  said  to  have  moved  non-Zionists  to  offer 
service  and  aid.  The  same  motive  will  move  them 
to  investment  in  the  upbuilding  of  a  Jewish  Palestine. 
But  also,  and  perhaps  largely,  the  desire  to  mitigate 
the  home  problems  that  arise  out  of  immigration  will 
move  them:  Palestine  is  nearer  to  central  Europe 
than  America  or  Australia  and  the  establishment  of  the 
immigrant  there  is  far  less  costly.  Interest  in  particular 
modes  of  development  will  move  them.  But  not 
profits  as  profits.  For  an  undertaking  in  Palestine 
initiated  merely  by  the  hope  of  gain  can  mean  only 
what  concessionary  enterprises  mean  in  any  undevel¬ 
oped  country — the  sweating  of  labour  at  starvation 
wages,  the  skimping  of  power  and  the  waste  of  material. 


“VITA  NUOVA?” 


333 


the  multiplication  of  charges.  Such  undertakings 
can  only  serve,  as  has  already  been  observed,  to  drive 
the  Jews  from  Palestine,  not  to  implant  them  there. 
Investments  in  Palestinian  enterprises  will  necessarily 
serve  a  public  end  far  more  than  a  private  motive. 
Investors  will  need  to  be  glad,  if,  in  the  course  of  time, 
their  money  comes  back  to  them,  and  if  it  does  not 
come  back  to  them,  but  has  actually  served  to  make 
numbers  of  their  tragic  brethren  from  central  Europe 
permanently  at  home  in  Palestine,  they  will  not  need 
to  be  without  rejoicing. 

Aiming  at  no  profits  in  the  sense  in  which  investors 
in  other  fields  aim  at  profits,  they  will  not  tolerate  the 
risks  which  are  undertaken  in  the  hope  of  profit. 
They  will  wish  their  money  to  be  used  with  all  the 
economy,  speed,  and  efficiency  possible;  i.  e.,  they  will 
wish  the  greatest  possible  number  of  Jews  implanted 
and  self-supporting  upon  Palestinian  soil  in  the  shortest 
possible  time.  They  will  resent  the  waste  that  comes 
through  the  reduplication  of  effort,  through  haste, 
through  carelessness,  through  incoordination,  through  ir¬ 
responsibility ,  incompetence,  untrustworthiness,  through 
any  of  the  conditions  that  have  hitherto  prevailed  under 
the  East-European  Zionist  administration  in  Palestine. 
The  very  nature  of  their  objective  rules  out  as  dangerous 
and  undesirable  the  initiation  of  a  collection  of  diverse 
projects,  each  going  on  its  own.  The  primary  want, 
hence,  is  for  a  coordinating  central  agency,  which 
shall  specify,  analyze,  and  establish  priorities  in  the 
economic  needs  in  Palestine,  and  shall  take  the  initia¬ 
tive  in  creating  the  industrial  and  financial  instruments 
to  serve  their  needs.  It  is  an  agency,  that  is,  which 
would  function  like  the  American  War  Industries 


334  ZIONISM  AND  WORLD  POLITICS 


Board  during  the  Great  War.  Its  organization,  how¬ 
ever,  would  need  to  be  determined  by  the  conditions 
out  of  which  it  arises  and  the  interests  it  serves.  It 
would  have  to  be  called  together,  obviously,  by  the 
Zionists,  who  alone  are  prepared  to  assume  the  already 
long-delayed  initiative.  They  might  designate  the 
Economic  Council  or  some  other  body  to  undertake 
to  secure  the  financing  of  a  company  to  develop,  for 
example,  hydro-electric  operations  involving  water¬ 
power,  water-supply,  drainage,  and  irrigation,  and  a 
company  to  create  the  building  industry,  from  quarry¬ 
ing  to  construction,  in  the  form  of  a  guild  like  those 
now  in  operation  in  Manchester  and  London.  Each 
company,  as  it  is  formed,  would  automatically  send  a 
representative  chosen  by  the  investors  to  the  coordinat¬ 
ing  agency.  If,  in  addition,  it  is  provided  that  the 
people  of  Palestine  as  'producers  and  as  consumers 
are  also  represented  on  this  board,  then  the  whole  of 
Jewry  would  be  adequately  represented,  and  repre¬ 
sented  in  their  groupings  as  the  parties  at  interest.  The 
Zionists  and  the  Jews  in  general  would  be  represented 
by  the  agencies  designated  to  take  the  initiative:  the 
investors  by  their  chosen  representatives;  the  Jews 
of  Palestine  by  election  from  Hamashbir  and  from 
Ahduth  Avodah  whose  expansion  to  the  point  of 
embracing  the  total  Jewish  population  of  Palestine 
would  be  automatically  secured  by  the  assignment 
to  them  of  this  electoral  responsibility.  The  coordinat¬ 
ing  agency  thus  standing  for  all  Jewry  would  be  a 
trustee  for  all  Jewry  in  the  development  of  Jewish 
Palestine.  It  might  establish  its  trusteeship  by  hold¬ 
ing  Founders’  Shares  analogous  to  those  of  the  Jewish 
Colonial  Trust  or  by  more  effective  or  convenient 


“VITA  NUOVA?” 


S35 


devices.  Its  charter  should  require  it  to  devise  and 
provide  ways  by  which,  in  the  fulness  of  time,  the 
ownership  of  its  enterprises  shall  pass  to  the  Jews  of 
Palestine  organized  as  a  National  Consumers’  Coopera¬ 
tive  Association  and  the  management  of  each  pass  to 
its  working  force  organized  as  the  Producers’  Coopera¬ 
tive  Society  of  the  whole  industry. 

The  steps  which  lead  to  this  culmination  involve 
a  type  of  financial  arrangement  and  industrial  organiza¬ 
tion  for  which  there  is  no  merely  “business”  precedent. 
But  neither  is  there  a  precedent  for  the  problem  these 
are  designed  to  solve.  The  matter  of  importance  is 
that  there  does  exist  among  the  Jews  of  the  world  the 
will  to  solve  the  problem,  but  not  the  realization  of  the 
inexorable  terms  and  conditions  of  its  solution.  These, 
and  the  methods  by  which  alone  they  may  be  met 
and  mastered,  have  been  indicated  in  the  Pittsburgh 
Programme  and  the  studies  that  underly  it.  The 
New  Life  of  the  Jewish  people  in  the  New  Zion  will 
either  attain  the  forms  designated  or  remain  a  com¬ 
pensatory  ideal. 


THE  END 


INDEX 


INDEX 


Abdul  Hamid,  83,  10G,  110. 

Abraham,  23. 

Actions  Committee,  79. 

Adams,  John,  42,  56. 

Ahad  Ha’am,  76,  89-97,  105,  118. 

Ahduth  Avodah,  321,  324,  325,  334. 

Alroy,  David,  14. 

Ahuzoth,  322. 

Alexander  II,  68. 

Alexander,  David,  168. 

Allenby,  General,  252,  258,  278. 

Alliance  Israelite  Universelle,  49,  56, 
70,  107,  116,  177,  189,  247. 

Alp,  Tekin,  114. 

“  Altneuland,”  Herzl’s,  77. 

“Americanization,”  of  Jewish  immi¬ 
grants,  126;  influence  of,  on  Jewish 
community  organization,  142. 

American  Jewish  Commission  to 
Peace  Conference,  180;  attitude  on 
“national  rights,”  184. 

American  Jewish  Committee,  141; 
attitude  toward  American  Jewish 
Congress,  113;  attitude  toward 
Balfour  declaration,  172,  177. 

American  Jewish  Congress  proposed, 
142;  attitude  of  Zionists  toward, 
143;  of  American  Jewish  Com¬ 
mittee  toward,  143;  of  “labour 
leaders”  toward,  145;  of  American 
Jewry  toward,  145;  negotiations 
over,  146;  call  for,  147;  held,  177. 

American  Jewish  Relief  Committee, 
151. 

American  Rabbis,  Conference  of, 
331. 

American  Zionist  Medical  Unit,  172, 
255,  325. 

Amos,  8. 

Anglo-Jewish  Association,  247. 

Anglo-Palestine  Company,  107. 

Antisemitism,  Herzl  on,  73;  in  Tsar¬ 
ist  Russia,  83;  in  Soviet  Russia, 
211;  in  Poland,  219;  in  Ukrainia, 


244  seq.;  in  Hungary,  229  seq.; 
in  other  European  countries,  235; 
in  the  United  States,  a  class 
attitude,  242;  among  British 
officers  in  Palestine,  252. 

Annual  Conference  of  1920,  281, 
note  seq. 

Annual  Report  of  Zionist  Organiza¬ 
tion  of  America,  282  note. 

Arabs,  political  work  on  by  British, 
162;  attitude  toward  Zionism,  189; 
grown  unity  of  feeling  among, 
249;  British  and  French  policy 
toward,  251;  Tripolitan,  on  Turk¬ 
ish  treaty,  257;  historic  relations 
with  Jews,  291;  cooperation  with 
Jews  desirable,  294;  economic 
status  in  Palestine,  300;  impossi¬ 
bility  of  cooperative  economy 
among,  312. 

Arab  Club,  The,  256. 

Arab  villages  in  Palestine,  attitude 
of,  toward  Zionism,  259. 

Assimilation,  68. 

Atrocities,  on  Jews  in  eastern 
Europe,  142. 

Automatic  machine,  effect  of,  on 
Palestinian  economy,  298. 

“Awakened  Magyars,”  230. 

Bagdad  Railroad,  159. 

Baksheesh,  98,  105,  110. 

Balfour,  A.  J.,  166,  268,  272,  300. 

Balfour  Declaration,  169  seq.;  effect 
on  Turks  and  Germans,  170,  171; 
on  Jews,  171  seq.;  in  Palestine, 
173;  at  the  Peace  Conference, 
189  seq.;  as  a  gospel  of  religious 
hope,  246;  later  attitude  of  Board 
of  Deputies  toward,  247;  in  Near 
Eastern  politics,  248;  sabotaged 
by  military  in  Palestine,  252;  op¬ 
posed  by  missionary  interest,  252; 

,  reaffirmed  by  Curzon,  253;  en- 


340 


INDEX 


dangered  by  imperialist  policies, 
256-259;  realization  demanded  in 
England,  260;  resolution  of  British 
labour  on,  260;  incorporated  in 
Turkish  Treaty,  262,  275;  French 
and  British  pledge  to  Arabs,  289. 

Basle  Platform,  adopted  at  first 
Congress,  74;  adopted  by  fraternal 
organizations  in  United  States, 
155. 

Beaconsfield,  14,  50,  56. 

Belkind,  Israel,  101. 

Bergson,  59. 

Bezalel  Art  School,  108. 

“Bill  of  Rights,”  Jewish,  178  seq .; 
basis  of  memorandum  to  Peace 
Conference,  184. 

Billikopf,  Jacob,  151. 

Bols,  Gen.,  252. 

Bolshevism,  204 ;  anti-  Semitism 
under,  211. 

Brailsford,  H.  N.,  158. 

Brandeis,  Louis  Dembitz,  133,  135, 
136,  138,  139,  145,  166,  256,  281, 
note  seq.,  301. 

Brest-Litovsk,  Treaty  of,  effect  on 
Jews,  172;  on  the  Ukraine,  223. 

British  Palestine  Committee,  165. 

Bund,  The,  219. 

Bussche,  Baron  von  dem,  170. 

Capitalism,  Character  of,  202. 

Caste  War,  between  “German”  and 
“Russian”  Jews  in  U.  S.,  217. 

Cecil,  Lord  Robert,  260. 

Chasdai  ibn  Shaprut,  14. 

Christianism,  20;  and  citizenship, 
21 ;  and  infallibility,  22. 

Chmelnicki,  28. 

Citizenship:  effect  of  religious  im¬ 
perialism  on,  21 ;  Jews  deprived  of, 
22;  and  church  membership,  31; 
Jews  admitted  to  in  England,  34; 
in  France,  35. 

Clemenceau,  G.,  198,  206. 

Committee  of  Jewish  Delegations  to 
the  Peace  Conference,  181;  dispute 
with  representatives  of  Joint 
Foreign  Committee  and  Alliance 
Israelite  Uni  verselle,  182;  activities 
after  Paris  Conference,  247. 

Committee  of  Union  and  Progress, 

111. 


Compensatory  habit  of  mind,  Jewish 
regarding  Palestine,  282  seq. 

Cremieux,  Adolphe,  57. 

Cromwell,  30. 

Congressus  Judaicus,  27-30. 

Conjoint  Committee,  167;  anti- 
Zionist  letter  to  London  Times, 
167. 

Constituent  Assembly,  Jewish,  in 
Palestine,  255. 

Consumers’  Cooperation,  308. 

Consumption,  Economics  of,  303 
seq. 

Council  of  Four,  Psychology  of,  206; 
attitude  toward  Turks,  250. 

“Cultural  Centre,”  76  seq. 

Curzon,  Lord,  253. 

“Defeatism,”  161;  effect  of  on  the 
attitude  of  the  Allies  toward 
Zionism,  163. 

De  Haas,  Jacob,  136. 

De  Lieme,  Nehemiah,  281,  note. 

Dembitz,  Louis,  134. 

Democracy,  political,  in  Europe, 
198  seqr,  and  in  America,  199; 
economic  basis  of,  199;  modified 
by  industrialism,  200;  basis  of 
financial  imperialism,  202;  ideol¬ 
ogy  of,  at  the  Peace  Conference, 
206,  212. 

Denikine,  209,  224,  225. 

Deuteronomy,  297,  298. 

Diamanstein,  245. 

Diderot,  34. 

Djemal  Pasha,  166,  173. 

Dmowski,  217,  220. 

Dumas  fils,  50. 

Dunant,  Henri,  49. 

Economic  Council,  proposed  for 
Palestine,  331. 

“Economic  Man,”  the,  54. 

Education,  Jewish,  in  Palestine,  326; 
necessary  reorganization  of,  327. 

Einstein,  Albert,  283,  note. 

Eliot,  George,  50. 

Enfranchisement  of  Jews,  in  France, 
35;  in  England,  35;  in  western 
Europe,  37. 

Epic,  The  Augustinian,  22. 

Eschatology,  23. 

Exilarchate,  27. 


INDEX 


341 


Extraordinary  Zionist  Conference, 
135,  143. 

Federation  of  American  Zionists,  153. 
Fellah,  The,  in  Palestine,  294,  298. 
Feisal,  Emir,  162,  194,  195,  251,  256, 
257,  258,  261,  262,  294. 

Financial  Imperialism,  democracy  a 
basis  of,  202. 

First  Zionist  Congress,  74. 

Ford,  Henry,  236. 

Feudal  Order,  The,  25  seq. 

Fichte,  39. 

Fineman,  H.,  90. 

Fourteen  Points,  The,  249,  286. 
Frankfurter,  Felix,  136,  194. 

French  Revolution,  The,  ideals  of, 
and  nationalism,  38,  39;  effect  of 
on  Jews,  52. 

Friedman,  Elisha,  205  note. 

Galatovski,  30. 

George,  Lloyd,  197,  206. 

Goedsche,  Hermann,  235. 

Gottheil,  Richard,  131. 

Grabski,  220. 

Grand  Island,  41. 

Graetz,  63. 

Guild  Socialism,  311. 

Haggai,  12. 

Halukah,  94,  97,  318. 

Halutzim,  3,  246. 

Hamashbir,  318  seq. 

Hamazmin,  320. 

Haskalah,  67,  seq.',  99. 

Hashomer,  91. 

Hebrew,  lingua  franca  of  the  Jews, 
68;  revival  of  in  Palestine,  99; 
symbol  of  Jewish  solidarity,  116; 
struggle  for,  in  Palestinian  schools, 
117;  to  be  an  official  language  of 
Palestine,  190;  use  of  sabotaged 
by  British  officials,  253. 

Hebrew  University,  120,  174. 

Hegel,  48,  278. 

Herod,  13. 

Herzl,  Theodore,  75,  105,  107,  136. 
Hess,  Moses,  58,  70,  71. 
Hilfsvereinderdeutschen  Juden,  117. 
Hollingsworth,  49. 

Holy  Alliance,  The,  44. 

Holyoake,  Geo.  Jacob,  308,  note. 


Hoover,  Herbert,  216. 

Horthy,  Admiral,  236. 

Hovevei  Zion,  71,  72,  77,  82,  107. 

Hungary,  industry  in,  226;  “west¬ 
ern”  movement  in,  226;  position 
of  Jews  in,  227;  attitude  of  Su¬ 
preme  Council  toward,  227;  com¬ 
munism  in,  228;  White  Terror  in, 
230;  French  treaty  with,  230; 
stand  of  labour  toward,  231. 

Husein,  Shereef,  162. 

Hyamson,  A.  M.,  40,  note. 

Imperialism,  Religious,  18;  compared 
with  ancient  religious  life,  18,  19; 
and  political  imperialism,  20; 
Roman,  20;  relation  to  theological 
infallibility,  20,  21;  effect  of,  on 
citizenship,  21;  economic,  158;  fi¬ 
nancial,  202;  and  democracy,  202. 

Industry,  Economy  of,  modifies 
democracy,  200  seq.;  influence  of, 
on  Russia,  208;  on  the  United 
States,  213;  on  Poland,  219;  on 
Hungary,  226;  importance  for  the 
development  of  Jewish  Palestine, 
289;  influence  on  the  structure  of 
society,  299. 

Infallibility,  Theological,  20,  21. 

Inner  Actions  Committee,  79. 

Inquisition,  The,  24. 

International  Palestine  Society,  49. 

International  Peace,  Prophetic  Con¬ 
ception  of,  11,  12. 

“Internationale,”  The,  55. 

Investment  in  Palestine,  probable 
character  of,  332;  organization  of, 

b  333. 

Isaiah,  8;  quoted,  10,  11. 

Islam,  preached  as  a  race,  250. 

Israel,  8. 

Israel,  Mennasah  ben,  30. 

Jabotinsky,  V.,  165,  171,  258,  259, 
281,  note. 

Jehovah,  8,  9. 

Jeremiah,  8. 

Jewish  communities,  in  seventeenth- 
century  Poland,  27-30;  and  the 
Catholic  Church  in  Poland,  29-30. 

Jewish  Colonial  Trust,  80,  207,  279. 

Jewish  Colonization  Association, 
102, 103,  107,  314,  322. 


342 


INDEX 


Jewish  Defense  Company,  organized 
in  Palestine,  258. 

Jewish  National  Fund,  The,  81,  108, 
279,  322. 

Jewish  Territorial  Organization,  84. 

Jews,  status  in  antiquity,  18;  in  the 
Roman  Empire,  20;  in  Christian 
doctrine,  23;  in  mediaeval  Europe, 
24;  admitted  to  England  by  Crom¬ 
well,  30;  enfranchised  in  England, 
35;  enfranchised  in  France,  35; 
under  Napoleon,  41;  in  the  United 
States  of  1825,  41;  as  a  religious 
people,  66;  effect  of  partition  of 
Poland  on,  67;  status  in  pre- 
Zionist  Palestine,  93;  supreme 
victims  of  the  Great  War,  150; 
after  the  war  in  Poland,  219;  in 
Ukrainia,  224,  225;  in  Hungary, 
227  seq .;  in  Rumania,  232  seq.; 
inner  life  in  central  and  eastern 
Europe,  244;  treatment  of,  by 
Jewish  Socialists  there,  245;  Bol¬ 
shevist  treatment  of,  246;  effect  of 
treaty  of  San  Remo  on,  268-276; 
unprepared  to  meet  Palestinian 
problem,  275;  historic  relations 
with  Arabs,  291;  cooperation  with 
Arabs  desirable,  294;  dependent  on 
Pittsburgh  Programme  for  sur¬ 
vival  in  Palestine,  312. 

Job,  Book  of,  9. 

Joshua,  296. 

Joseph,  Archduke,  236. 

Judaism,  Reform  Movement  in,  35; 
compared  with  Christianism,  36, 
37. 

Judenitch,  209. 

Judenstaat,  HerzFs,  73. 

Kabbala  and  Kabbalism,  16,  26. 

Kahal,  65. 

Kalischer,  Rabbi  Hirsch,  70,  94. 

Kallen,  H.  M.,  206,  note;  309,  note. 

Kattowitz  Conference,  The,  96. 

Keren  Hayesod,  The,  281  note,  seq. 

Keynes,  Maynard,  197,  206. 

Khalifate,  The,  as  a  Near-Eastern 
problem,  250;  attitude  of  Moslems 
of  India  toward,  257. 

Kjamil  Pasha,  250. 

Kuchzarewski,  220. 

Kun,  Bela,  228,  229. 


Kolchak,  209. 

Kwuzoth,  255,  322. 

Labour  Leaders,  in  American  Jewish 
politics,  145. 

Labour  Party,  British,  on  the  Bal¬ 
four  Declaration,  287 ;  need  of 
Zionist  harmony  with,  290. 

Laharame,  49. 

Land  tenure,  in  Palestine,  313. 

Lasalle,  F.,  55,  56. 

Lawrence,  Col.  T.  E.,  162,  251. 

League  of  Nations,  The,  175,  180, 
187,  188,  190,  286,  292,  294. 

Lebanon  Committee,  The,  257. 

Lecky,  W.  H.,  263,  note;  quoted  on 
status  of  Jews  in  Europe,  265  seq. 

Lenine,  211. 

Levi  Bing,  Lazar,  56. 

Levi,  Sylvain,  189. 

Levin,  Dr.  Schmarja,  118,  135. 

Leviticus,  297,  298. 

Livshitz,  322. 

London  Daily  Herald,  The,  288,  note. 

Maccabseus,  Judas,  13. 

Mack,  Julian  W.,  136,  155,  178,  180, 
184. 

Machinery,  Consequences  from  the 
the  use  of,  53. 

MacMahon,  Sir  Henry,  163. 

Makover,  A.  B.,  42,  note. 

Mandate,  article  on,  in  Covenant  of 
the  League  of  Nations,  190;  terms 
of  for  Palestine,  as  formulated  by 
Zionists,  192  seq.;  draft  of,  for 
Palestine,  292,  note;  common  in¬ 
terest  of  Jews  and  Arabs  in,  293. 

Manchester  Guardian,  The,  165,  236. 

Mariana,  25. 

Marshall,  Louis,  141,  172,  180,  183, 
184. 

Marx,  Karl,  53,  56,  58. 

Masaryk,  Prof.,  217. 

Mazzini,  G.,  46,  48,  59. 

Mendelsohn,  Moses,  67. 

Merchaviah,  108. 

“Men,  Money,  Discipline,”  139. 

Messiah,  The,  14,  15. 

Meyer,  Eugene,  136. 

Mikweh  Israel  Agricultural  School, 
101,  322,  note. 

Millon,  The,  100. 


INDEX 


343 


Mirandola,  Pico  della,  20. 
Missionary  interest  in  Palestine,  252; 
opposed  to  Balfour  Declaration, 
252. 

Mitteleuropa,  115,  159. 

Mizrachi,  86  seq. 

Mond,  Sir  Alfred,  331. 

“Monroe  Doctrine,”  Zionist,  283, 
note. 

Montefiore,  Claude,  168. 

Montefiore,  Sir  Moses,  94. 
Montesquieu,  34. 

Morgenthau,  Henry,  221. 

Moses,  of  Crete,  14. 

Mossinsohn,  Dr.,  283,  note. 

Moza,  94. 

Motzkin,  Leon,  184. 

Nagidate,  The,  27. 

Napoleon,  41. 

National  minorities,  problem  of,  how 
met  at  Peace  Conference,  185-188. 
Nationalism,  Religious,  33;  Mazzinis’ 
view  of,  47;  applied  to  Jews,  48 
seq.;  effect  on  Jews,  52. 
Nationalist  Party,  Arab,  256. 
Nationality,  and  natural  rights,  44 
seq.;  growth  of,  in  Europe,  45. 
“National  Rights,”  at  Peace  Con¬ 
ference,  184  seq. 

“Natural  Man,”  The,  32. 

“Natural  Right,”  32. 

Nehemiah,  316;  quoted,  316,  note. 
Netter,  Charles,  57,  101. 

Nil  us.  Serge,  236. 

Nitti,  209. 

Noah,  M.  M.,  41,  48. 

Nordau,  Max,  75. 

Numbers,  Book  of,  296. 

O’Brien,  C.,  308,  note. 

Occupied  Enemy  Territory  Adminis¬ 
tration  in  Palestine,  252  seq.;  how 
recruited,  253;  anti-Semitism  in, 
252. 

“Odessa  Committee,”  72,  96,  102. 
Oldenburg,  30,  31. 

Oliphant,  Lawrence,  49. 
Oppenheimer,  Franz,  100,  275,  note. 
Ormsby-Gore,  Major,  174,  251. 
Oettinger,  275,  note. 

Paderewski,  Ignace,  220. 

Palestine,  as  Promised  Land,  6; 


condition  of,  92;  Jewish  population 
in,  104  seq.;  German  ambitions  in, 
116;  in  the  politics  of  the  Great 
War,  160;  as  a  problem  of  the 
Peace  Conference,  189;  role  of,  in 
Jewish  psyche,  272;  necessary 
change  of  Jewish  attitude  toward, 
273;  draft  mandate  for,  292,  note; 
land  tenure  in,  313;  labour  in,  321; 
Jewish  education  in,  331;  interest 
of  Diaspora  in,  331;  investment  in, 
332. 

Palestine  Commission,  108,  109. 

Pan-Arabism,  249. 

Pan-Slavism,  158. 

Pan-Turanianism,  113  seq.,  250. 

Parliamentary  Committee  on  Pales¬ 
tine  Affairs,  260. 

Parade,  Zionist,  276. 

“Parushim,”  The,  300. 

Patterson,  Col.,  166. 

Peabody,  F.  G.,  265,  note. 

Petach  Tikwah,  94. 

Petavel,  Abraham,  49. 

Petition,  Zionist,  156. 

Petliura,  223,  224,  225. 

Pinsker,  Leon,  71. 

Pilsudski,  209,  217,  220,  225. 

Pittsburgh  Programme,  referred  to, 
192,  300;  stated,  301;  bases  of,  SOI 
seq.;  necessary  to  development  of 
Jewish  homeland,  312. 

Poale  Zion,  89. 

Pobiedonostzeff,  69. 

Poel  Hazair,  89. 

Poland,  social  structure  of,  217; 
Powers  quoted  on,  218;  origin  of 
nationalism  in,  218;  Jews  in,  219; 
influence  of  industry  on,  219; 
parties  in  during  the  Great  War, 
220;  French  imperialism  in,  222; 
relation  to  Soviet  Russia,  222. 

“  Polonization  of  Commerce,”  220. 

Powers,  quoted,  218. 

Producers’  Cooperation,  308  seq. 

Production,  Economics  of,  303,  seq. 

Pro- Jerusalem  Society,  255. 

Promised  Land,  The,  6;  place  in 
Jewish  consciousness,  7;  in  Chris¬ 
tian  theology,  7;  in  Jewish  history, 
7  seq.;  in  the  Jewish  prayerbook, 
11;  restoration  to,  11  seq.;  in  Chris¬ 
tian  tradition,  14. 


344 


INDEX 


Protestantism,  25. 

“Protocols  of  the  Elders  of  Zion,” 
235;  Lucien  Wolf’s  exposure  of, 
237. 

Provisional  Executive  Committee 
for  General  Zionist  Affairs,  135, 
154. 

Public  Utilities,  in  Palestine,  315. 

Rabbinism,  66. 

Raines,  Rabbi  Jacob,  87. 

“Red  Ticket,”  105,  116. 

Reformation,  Wars  of  the,  25. 

Reformed  Judaism  in  the  United 
States,  132. 

Reform  Movement,  in  Judaism,  35- 
38. 

Reinach,  Salomon,  57. 

Reorganization  Commission,  Zionist, 
281,  note,  seq. 

Resolution,  of  British  Labour  on 
Balfour  Declaration,  260,  261. 

Restoration,  Idea  of,  1648-66,  30; 
letter  to  Jews  of  France  on,  40; 
plan  of  M.  M.  Noah  for,  42;  Hess’s 
plan  for,  60;  urged  by  George 
Eliot,  50  seq. ;  Kalischer’s  plan  for, 
70;  Herzl’s  plan  for,  73. 

Ricardo,  David,  53. 

Righteousness,  8,  9,  295;  as  social 
economy  in  ancient  Israel,  296 
seq. 

Riot,  The  Jerusalem,  258;  effect  of, 
in  England  and  the  United  States, 
259  seq. 

Rishon-le-Zion,  94. 

Rochdale  Plan,  The,  308. 

Rosenwald,  Julius,  151. 

Rosh  Pinnah,  94. 

Rothschild,  Baron  Edmond  de,  72, 
96,  97,  107,  314. 

Rothschild,  Lord,  169,  300. 

Rothschild,  Major  James,  de,  97, 
331. 

Rousseau,  34. 

Ruge,  Arnold,  59. 

Rumania,  organizes  Terror  in  Hun¬ 
gary,  229;  economy  of,  232;  status 
of  Jews  in,  233. 

Ruppin,  Arthur,  109,  275,  note. 

Russia,  economy  of,  208;  dependence 
of,  on  Europe,  209;  Soviet  Re¬ 
public  of,  in  foreign  politics,  210; 


education  in,  211;  American  atti¬ 
tude  toward,  212. 

Russian  Revolution,  The,  151. 

Ruthenberg,  Pincus,  165,  171,  256, 
258. 

Sabbattai  Zevi,  16,  27-31. 

Salvador,  Joseph,  56. 

Samuel,  Sir  Herbert,  165,  259,  262. 

Samuel,  Sir  Stuart,  221. 

San  Remo,  Treaty  of,  263;  social 
significance  of,  263;  effect  on  Jew¬ 
ish  position,  267  seq. 

Scientific  Charity,  Relation  of  Jews 
to,  125. 

Schiff,  Jacob  II.,  118,  note;  141,  170. 

Sch wendt,  Deputy,  35. 

Scott,  C.  P.,  165. 

Settlers,  early  Jewish  in  the  United 
States,  121;  relations  with  later 
comers,  122. 

mipkpi  npiif* 

Shlakhta,  The  Polish,  64,  218,  219, 

222. 

Sh’tadlan,  The,  123  seq.;  144. 

Sidebotham,  Herbert,  165. 

Simon,  Julius,  281,  note. 

Sixth  Zionist  Congress,  82,  106. 

Skoropadski,  Hetman,  223. 

Smith-Gordon,  L.,  308,  note 

Smuts,  Gen.  Jan,  228,  251. 

Socialism,  origins  of,  53;  among 
American  Jews,  130. 

Sokolow,  N.,  165,  166,  167,  189,  269. 

Sounischseu,  Albert,  308,  note. 

Spire,  Andre,  189. 

Spinoza,  31. 

Steel  and  Gold,  War  of,  158. 

Straus,  Nathan,  136. 

Suarez,  25. 

Sulzberger,  Judge  Mayer,  141. 

Supernaturalism  among  Jews,  15; 
messianic,  65. 

Swinburne,  48. 

Sykes-Picot  Treaty,  The,  160,  251, 
258  289. 

Sykes’,  Sir  Mark,  160,  166,  169,  251. 

Syrian  Congress,  The,  257. 

Syrian  and  Palestine  Colonization 
Society,  49. 

Talaat  Pasha,  170. ' 

Teachers’  Union,  The,  118  seq. 


INDEX 


345 


Times,  London,  167. 

Titus,  13. 

Torah,  10. 

Transfer  Department,  The,  of  Pro¬ 
visional  Executive  Committee  for 
General  Zionist  Affairs,  154. 

Tripartite  Agreement,  The,  262. 

Tschlenow,  Dr.,  118,  265. 

Turkish  Empire,  organization  of, 
110  seq;  Young  Turkish  revolu¬ 
tion  in,  112. 

Turks,  attitude  toward  Balfour 
Declaration,  170;  attitude  of  Coun¬ 
cil  of  Four  toward,  250. 

Uganda,  77. 

Unam  Sanctam,  Bull  of,  23. 

Ussishkin,  M.  M.,  106,  189,  283, 
note. 

Ukrainia,  French  politics  for,  223; 
during  the  Great  War,  223; 
economic  character  of,  224. 

Union  for  Labour  and  Democracy, 
American,  on  Zionism,  168. 

United  States,  The,  influence  of,  at 
Peace  Conference,  212;  ideology  of, 
212  seq.;  economic  changes  in,  213; 
national  neurasthenia  in,  214; 
foreign  propaganda  in,  215. 

Universalism,  prophetic,  12. 

Va’ad  Hachinuch,  327. 

Va’ad  Halashon,  100. 

Va’ad  Hazmani,  258. 

Voltaire,  34. 

Wa’ad  Arbah  Arazoth,  27. 

Wadi-el-Hannin,  94. 

Warburg,  Otto,  108. 

War  Aims,  duplicity  of,  157;  British 
Labour  Party  Statement  on,  287, 
note. 

Ward,  H.  F.,  265,  note. 

War  Congress,  American,  on  Zion¬ 
ism,  168. 

Wars,  Religious,  25. 

Water-power,  importance  of,  for 
Jewish  Palestine,  289. 

Weizmann,  Chaim,  165,  167,  174, 
189,  194,  244,  257,  281,  note,  316, 
note. 

Wilson,  Woodrow,  belief  in  Zionist 


programme,  166;  letter  regarding 
Hebrew  University,  174;  on  war 
aims,  175;  stand  on  Jewish  rights, 
181;  at  the  Peace  Conference,  197; 
fear  of  Bolshevism,  205;  on  French 
militarism,  206;  illness  of,  215; 
programme  of,  249,  286. 

Wise,  Stephen  S.,  131,  136,  180. 

Wolfsohn,  David,  84. 

Woman,  changed  position  of, 
through  reform  movement  in 
Judaism,  37. 

Wolf,  Lucien,  236,  242. 

Wrangel,  Baron,  209. 

Yehudah,  Eliezer  Ben,  99  seq. 

Yemenites,  108. 

Young  Turks,  111;  attitude  toward 
Zionism,  115. 

Zangwill,  I.,  75,  84,  244. 

Zec-hariah,  12. 

Zeiri  Zion,  89. 

Zerubbabel,  12. 

Zhidlovsky,  Dr.,  178. 

Zikron  Yaakob,  94. 

Zionism,  origin  and  basis  of,  5  seq.; 
attitude  of  Palestinian  Jewry 
toward,  104;  organization  of,  in  the 
United  States,  129  seq.;  opposition 
to  in  the  United  States,  132;  effect 
of  the  Great  War  on,  in  the  United 
States,  136;  and  aims  of  Great 
War,  157;  attitude  of  British 
Labour  Party  to,  168;  attitude  of 
American  Union  for  Labour  and 
Democracy  to,  168;  and  American 
War  Congress,  168;  of  assimila- 
tionists,  169;  papal  reversal  on, 
258;  Mr.  Balfour  on,  269  seq.; 
a  compensatory  ideal,  277;  new 
purpose  of,  280. 

Zionist  Commission,  The,  173,  190; 
difficulties  of,  during  British  mili¬ 
tary  administration  in  Palestine, 
253  seq. 

Zionist  Organization,  first  form  of, 
78;  in  basic  need  of  reconstruc¬ 
tion,  279  seq. 

Zionist  Organization  of  America, 
reorganized  from  earlier  Zionist 
societies,  155. 

Zion  Mule  Corps,  166. 


THE  COUNTRY  LIFE  PRESS 
GARDEN  CITY,  N.  Y 


I 


